The Aultmore distillery is one of those distilleries you don’t meet every day.
It’s part of the Dewars corporation’s single malt distilleries (together with, Craigellachie, Macduff, Aberfeldy and Royal Brackla) which produce the malts needed for the Dewar’s blended whiskys. This distillery does not have its own core expressions (there was an official Flora & Fauna release while it was owned by Guinness, a Rare Malts Selection 21 year old in 1995, and a 12 year old official bottling from 2004, and kind of just dissipated without a trace). In truth, Dewars seems to have little interest in the single malt market as only Aberfeldy maintains regualr official expressions on the market.
Like many of the “blender’s distilleries”, Aultmore garners fairly little attention from single malt aficionados, although you can find a good number of independent bottlings on the market at any given time (I currently count some 11 independent bottlings available, and there are probably even more around).
Nevertheless, this is not a readily available whisky and is worth tasting when you get the opportunity. I’ll mention the Douglas Laing Double Barrel Altmore and Ardbeg review I had on the blog a few weeks ago, to be found here.
We now turn to the tasting notes for the single cask SMWS expression of the 1982 Aultmore:
Scotch Malt Whisky Society Cask 73.45 – Aultmore 19 Years ex-Sherry butt Distilled 1/9/1982, bottled 1.7.2009 (56.1% ABV, NCF, NC)
Color: Deep bronze, very slow legs.
Nose: Sherry raisins, demerara sugar, faint pine, dried fruit, cinnamon and cooked clove (like a clove after it was cooked in a fruit soup). With water: Spice, over a layer of waffles and syrup.
Palate: Classic sherry bomb, sherry sweetness and spice, cotton candy, the spice develops out of the sweetness.
Linger: Dry and sweet, with cinnamon and clove distinct in the sweet linger. Residual sweetness with prunes, dried apricots and sweet cranberries on the tongue.
This is a real classic sherry bomb, to be enjoyed over time, it develops slowly with the gradual addition of water by the drop.