One Quick Dram: Tomatin Vintage 1988 – Batch 1

When two whisky bloggers get together for a dram, you’re sure to see reviews flying about, and last night Yoav Gelbfish of the excellent Whisky Gospel blog came over bearing a tasting of the two new Tomatin expressions, and we enjoyed them together.

As the sherry cask shortage gets more acute, we’re apt to see more and more distilleries moving away from sherry based expressions, and Tomatin is no different.

The distillery is revamping it’s core range and replacing two of its expressions: The 15 year old which was fully ex-Bourbon cask matured making it stand out – and not in a good way – from the rest of the core range, has been replaced with the 14 year old Port finish (you can read Yoav’s tasting notes on the Tomatin 14 here). Additionally, the excellent 30 year old Oloroso sherry matured is being replaced with the 1988 Vintage which is a combination of ex-Bourbon and ex-Port casks. We set out to see how this combination worked out:

 

Tomatin Vintage 1988 – Batch 1 (46% ABV, 2500 bottles in batch 1)

Color: Gold, well spaced out legs.

Nose: Fresh flowers, green pasture, honey, the Port isn’t too dominant, sweet berries and fresh apricot. This nose could actually fool you into thinking it had some sherry  in there. With time, the nose develops to bring out more  dry port and melted butter.

Palate: Starts out very nutty which gives way to spices and a sweetness. This flash of sweetness leads into a tannic tinge with spices dominated by sweet cinnamon.

Linger: Short to medium, port sourness in mouth and spice in the throat with notes of cinnamon and nutmeg.

This is a worthy expression, with the expected complexity of a mature whisky.

3 comments on “One Quick Dram: Tomatin Vintage 1988 – Batch 1

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *