Auchentoshan 22 Year Single Malt – Cask Strength Single Cask!

AUCHENTOSHAN SINGLE MALT
Hogshead Cask #DL13612 (2019)

MASH BILL – 100% malted barley

PROOF – 103

AGE – 22 years 5 months

DISTILLERY – Auchentoshan (bottled by Douglas Laing & Co. for their “Old Particular” series)

PRICE – $186

WORTH BUYING? – No, although…

Uncorked and tasted in The Year of No Buying (The what? 🔗 here.)

Back in August 2016 I was in Tampere, Finland, for a theater festival. The hotel I stayed in had a cozy lobby area, with swinging chairs suspended from the ceiling and a modest bar selection available behind the registration counter. One night I enjoyed a glass of 18-year scotch, name started with an “A,” that was sumptuously smoky, like a thick oak forest perfumed by the smoke of a distant fire. I ordered up a glass every night for the rest of my stay, and enjoyed it while swaying in one of those swinging chairs.

As I was not yet aware that I was standing at the embarkation point of my whisky journey, I neglected to jot down the name of the brand. A week later I was in Edinburgh, Scotland, suddenly very aware I was embarking on a journey, and jotting down scotch names left and right. But the name of that gorgeous 18-year “A” scotch alas remains a hazy image on a simple, cream-colored label, wrapped around a dark green bottle—and that could be any of a thousand brands!

Recently I decided to try tracking it down by way of my senses. This means buying “A” name scotches and seeing if they conjure a clear memory. My hopes for success are admittedly not high. But at least it will get me to try some new scotch brands.

This pursuit is what brought this Auchentoshan 22 Year to my shelf. The price made it quite a gamble. And it being a single cask release from a secondary bottler meant it would vary from the more rounded Auchentoshan-direct blends, which a hotel would be more likely to carry. Also, the scotch I had in Tampere was smoky, and Auchentoshan does not use peat. However ☞ my faded memory is indeed of a smoky scotch, not necessarily a peated one, so, therein lies a thin whiff of hope.

You may have noticed I’m okay with pseudo-science when it comes to these whisky rabbit holes I periodically go down. It’s all about the journey in the end. 😉🥃

At uncorking, I knew right away this wasn’t that mythic brand that had embraced me with its forest fire smoke in that cozy Finnish hotel bar. More significantly disappointing, I found it immediately off-putting. It was metallic and bitter, its tropical fruit notes too weak to push through the sturdy copper and aggressively jagged malt. I thought to myself, If I really wanted to suck on an old penny, I could have saved myself $185.99!

But of course I also know better than to dismiss a whisky based on its first, least aerated pour. I let it sit for a few days before trying it again. The second pour was even more metallic and bitter than the first. 🙄 I added water. All that did was thin everything out.

So I let it sit for another few days…

And now here we are, eight days after uncorking and three pours into the bottle, hoping this third pour will be the charm. After letting the whisky take air in a traditional Glencairn glass for 30 minutes, here are some brief notes.

COLOR – beautifully buttery pale yellows

NOSE – chunky salt crystals, dry marzipan, brass, dried pineapple, floury raw bread dough, malt, faint vanilla-caramel fudge

TASTE – a dominant veil of bitter metallic flavors, behind which lurk custard, caramel, edgy malt, and the faintest tropical fruit notes

FINISH – another plume of bitter malt and metal up front, leaving a scratchy line etched around faint tropical fruits like papaya and mango, as well as the warm custard and vanilla-caramel notes

OVERALL – a metallic, malty, bitter, irritable dram

Well, this third pour is not the charm. But it has improved. The bitter elements are now met with breadier notes, which roll out a soft path to the still woefully weak candy and fruit notes. But that’s not enough to save things. This is still for certain not that fabled Tampere hotel lobby whisky. And it’s still not a whisky of which I’ve enjoyed a single sip. That is a cryin’ shame for $186.

Granting taste is eternally subjective, and there may very well be people for whom this particular flavor profile is perfectly acceptable, even so I believe this cask to be mediocre. That’s the downside of the secondary bottler market. Not every single cask can be a winner, and the purity of cask strength isn’t always better. Some whiskies really are best when lost among the layers of an expertly vatted blend.

I have had so much great luck with secondary bottlers over the years, especially Douglas Laing. This unfortunate experience does not diminish that fact, nor sway me from my view of secondary bottlers as ultimately a better bet and value than distillery-direct releases.

Auchentoshan’s claim to particularity is being one of the few scotch distilleries that triple distill their whiskies, an extra effort more readily associated with Irish whiskey. But as I gradually came to realize over the course of many Midleton experiences, although that extra run through the copper pipes might make a distillate more refined in certain respects, it can also render it too like a copper penny. And I had my fill of tasting those when I was five.

Life could be worse.

Sláinte anyway…!

Addendum

It occasionally happens that a whisky makes one impression, and then some weeks or months later makes quite another—sometimes for the better, sometimes the worse. Why? Oxidation as the bottle takes air over time. A change of body chemistry in the drinker. It’s hard to say with certainty.

In any event, this Auchentoshan is an example—and to my great surprise! I really did not care for this one. I’m not one to toss a whisky out, and I’m stubbornly inclined toward second and third chances, if not more. So one foggy San Francisco evening, chilly and very suited to scotch, I reached for this bottle with a sigh and gave it another go. This was about six weeks after the tasting notes taken above…

I almost didn’t recognize it! Gone was the bitter metallic wall, allowing the sweet candy and fruit notes to gush forward. Very surprising. I tried it again the next night. Same cascade of sweet notes. I waited another week, and took down these notes:

NOSE – peaches, cooled stewed nectarine, primrose flowers, salty sea air, lemons in fresh water, light oak tannin, custard, milk chocolate

TASTE – cooked persimmon, baked peach in custard, spice like from a copper pot still, dried mango and pineapple, a dusting of black pepper, light oak tannin

FINISH – a nice balance between the various fruits and spices

OVERALL – Now that is something I can truly enjoy

It’s as if a charismatic orchard phoenix has risen from the ashes of a dull-witted factory pigeon. The bitter and metallic notes from weeks ago remain, only now like a neat trim rather than a dominant wall. The fruit notes reveal themselves with much more variation, splattered with the custard and milk chocolate.

Well. Sometimes patience does get rewarded. Moral? Don’t give up on that bitter bottle. It may simply need room to breathe.

Sláinte!