Auchentoshan Silveroak 22yo 1990/2012 50.9%
This might be the easiest distillery to get to for a tourist who isn’t in Scotland for the whisky. Just outside Glasgow, a breeze to get to, conspicuously sited next to a main road. And completely removed from the romantic notion of the highland distiller hiding in coves and glens away from excise men.
It’s also rather easy on the eye:
Also, this might be the only distillery I have been to with a security guardhouse.
So! Triple distillation – every drop triple distilled, proclaims each bottle. And the only Scottish distillery to triple distill. Also true – though it is more accurate to say the only remaining Scottish distillery to practice full triple distillation on a full time basis. Why triple distill in the first place? We are not sure – the most plausible answer might be that it was the ‘Irish’ way brought by Irish immigrants. But even Talisker triple distilled for some time in its history. Neither was it exclusively the ‘Lowland’ way as several Lowland distilleries only double distilled.
Another puzzling thing is what triple distillation is said to effect on new-make. In the Scotch world, much ado over Auchentoshan’s lightness is made out as a result of it’s triple distillation. It is true that a third distillation would result in a lighter cleaner spirit, ceteris paribus, and Auchentoshan’s is indeed purpose-built to be light. But just go over to Midleton where they have something like 4 different distillation regimes to acheive 4 spirits of varying heaviness – and their Heavy Pot Still is heavier than some double distilled malts.
(photo – tousfromedinburgh.com)
Here they are: Wash, Intermediate and Spirit stills from left to right, and from here they don’t look all that big.
(Official photo)
Nose: The label says honeysuckle and apricot, and for once, I actually agree. Could it be that ‘Toshan’s tasting notes are handled by the product team and not the marketing department? There is a clean jammy-ness that is not heavy but bright, reminiscent of white stone fruit, and the sweetness is more runny honey than treacle. Though with air the oloroso notes do peek through with plum and cocoa, and there is a subtle toasted coconut throughout. No escaping this is a light clean nose without heaviness.
Palate: Immediately sweet with some malt and estery eau-de-vie. The oloroso gets more pronounced and makes it a marashino cherry liquer (that’s kirsch isn’t it), but overall it remains light bodied, with generous heapings of black pepper and an inherent fizzy spiritiness that isn’t new make like at all.
Finish: Medium, peppery spicy, cocoa powder, oloroso has the last say.
So it gets it’s flavour from the bourbon and sherry, and the spirit doesn’t seem to ‘add’ anything though it carries the flavours nicely, but it goes down well and clearly a blender spent some time getting exactly what he wanted on this one.
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