Bigrab’s Whisky Recommendation – Dalwhinnie

On my recent holiday the wife and weans had booked some horse riding at Newtonmore which gave me the opportunity for another distillery tour.

Dalwhinnie is the highest altitude distillery in Scotland and I believe the village (meaning meeting place) is the highest village.

The Hotel owners obviously have a sense of humour.

The main product of Dalwhinnie is a fifteen year old malt. It’s unusual for a distillery to have a fifteen year old as its standard product. Other than that the only other product is a sherry matured one which I got a wee taste of.

As you know I’m not great on the tasting note stuff so here is how the makers describe it

and here is how whiskydistilleries.com reviewed it.

A good whisky from the Classic Malts series. But it did not leave me an imperishable memory. It is on its place in each whisky collection, but is not really exceptional.

The spicy but rather vague nose evokes the barley with some difficult to define hints, probably some rather acid honey (?). The same feeling is present in the palate. The finish is relatively short, and here again, the barley with some more acid touches is present.

Spices on a cereal background, that what the nose detects. In the palate, a rather flat taste consisting of barley enhanced by some slightly acid hints. The finish is rather short, but quite interesting because some new flavors appear, like nice liquorice hints on a slightly woody background.

Here are some photos I took. There were none allowed on the tour.

My own impression is of a fairly typical highland/speyside malt, very smooth and light. Nice with a packet of maltesers (seriously!)

The tour having taken an hour and with another hour and a half at least to wait I adjourned to the Dalwhinnie Hotel (there literally was nowhere else to go!) which is a nice modern place who do a very nice fresh coffee,the day’s newspapers and a grand selection of malts.

Cheers!