Mortlach 15yo G&M 43% vs 46yo 1936 G&M 40% vs 32yo Official 1971 2004 Special Release 50.1%
Merry Christmas and a mega Mortlach do. I was very blessed to fill the last 3 days of festivities with friends, family and food, lots of food. Beef, turkey, ham, repeat. But what to drink? Something meaty and often sherried? Nothing exemplifies this profile better than Mortlach! Talk Mortlach and you will always hear about its unique distillation regime and how Mortlach is something like 2.8 times distilled.
More distillation does not mean lighter whisky in this case, as the feints and foreshots are effectively refined several times and returned to the heart cut to give the whisky a characteristic sulfury quality that is much loved by blenders. So loved in fact, this distillery was to be expanded with a mirror image expansion to double production. Said expansion is complete and functional, and churning out vast quantities of new make, a Singapore based Diageo luxury brands representative assured me. There is also a new 32 year old official being released in 2015 he says. Utter rubbish. The expansion is on permanent hold, there is no new 32 yo release. Seems big companies see fit to hire shitty fibbers as sales staff. This would be a major breach if this was the finance sector by the way.
Mortlach 15 G&M 43% ~2013
Nose: Quite ‘sulphury’/gunpowder-y but that’s a marker for Mortlach. Clear nose prickle in this one. Also clearly a large sherry-something component. Here we have some indistinct orangey prune-y richness matched with the neighbour’s neighbour’s roast plus plain malty cereals. Fair amount of green apple like fruity esters, probably from the spirit. All coming together to make this a rather decent and drinkable whisky, which cannot be said for a lot of 15 year olds anymore.
Palate: Tobacco, more plain malt, quite dry and charred with brown paper, brown sugar, woody spices. Quite hot and raw actually. Rather ‘decent’ again.
Finish: Fairly long, turns more meaty here, more dry ,like malt in a kiln.
Great introduction to Mortlach. Rather ok drink. Not great but certainly not bad.
Mortlach 1936 46yo Connoisseur’s Choice Gordon & Macphail 40%
Nose: Wow this is deep old sherry. Imagine this was filled before World War II and not bottled till the year of the Falklands War in 1982. Tad weak but the elements stand out. A store full of preserved and pickled citrons, rich and deep though not juicy fresh. I always get this metal polish and just a tiny bit of chinese medicine in these old sherry butts. But this one also has something like that white paste you fill holes in the wall with. Tar sealant at the back of an ancient cabinet. Something buttery baking, and the faint fragrance of some dried flowers. Really faint. Amazingly not too woody even to me, and none of that gunpowder as far as I can tell.
Palate: Ah the low strength hurts here, as it is not as whiz-bang as I hoped for. Comparatively weaker than a 50 year old Glen Grant I have. But the positives: Scrubbed silverware, ancient lacquered wood, again touches of bitter herbals. By no means flimsy on the tongue though. Then wow, the dried florals come out a lot more here, even to the point of being a tad musty. A little strange on the tongue. Ever chewed on crayons? And toasty.
Finish: Medium-long, liquefied crayola style petrochem-oily and finally it gets more and more woody. Really out to confuse with its flavours.
This one started out great, and flavour wise is complex and old school enough to be an experience, but the low strength and perhaps too much time in the bottle has hurt it overall.
Mortlach 32yo 1971/2004 Special Release 50.1%
Nose: Did I make a mistake placing this last? The most subtle of the 3, but also the most complex. Plum glazed honey ham, roasty gristle and jus. Sprinkled with an array of these glassy, waxy, granular mineral notes, plus some grassy greens, and again mixed with some sweetness. Now the richness is far from overt. In fact you can barely tell its there. But there’s something purple in it. Like opening a box of figs or dates. And again also something earthy like leather boots caked with black earth. The whole is really subtle and comes together really well, I can’t explain it. The strength is perfect and bolsters the complexities with some muscle. Really good.
Palate: Ah more wood here, and the strength is clear though nowhere overwhelmingly powerful. Lots and lots of flavours, I’ll just list it out: Dry heat, leaf sap, white tea, wood spices, gristly savouriness to the point of being almost salty, dry grass in the hot sun, some little subtle dry-sweet notes, something cauterized, pollen. Great stuff.
Finish: Very long. smoked ham. Crysanthemum. Lip smacking and appetite whetting rather than filling.
This is really really great whisky full stop.
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