Brora 40 yo 1972 59.1% for 13th March, a very special day
Wow would you look at the date. It’s been a busy and eventful couple of weeks, but today’s tasting is to mark a very special occasion. My family becomes four. Her name’s Ashlyn and this calls for something equally remarkable.. and ashy ((I just can’t help it)). I do believe I have just the sample for this.
Brora 40 yo 1972 59.1%
Let’s just ignore the bombastic presentation… My initial thoughts were – dear God this ought to have been bottled sooner. At 40 years, the sheer length of time in wood can corrupt even the best whisky with unwonted overwoodiness. But let’s give it a fair chance. This is the oldest official expression of Brora, drawn from one of the last casks of the 1972 vintage left in existance. Was GBP7k in 2014, which at that time was a phenomenal price, today it’s starting to look fair.
Nose: Are you serious? Not tired in any way. Remarkably exuberent at 40yo. Full on Brora markers, earthy peat soggy with some thick black petrochemical oil. Coal and wood that’s been buried forever and just dug up. Farmy! with this clean but manky funk. Overripe fruit moldering in a pile. Cold salt air, dried branch strippings, old wax pots and some minerals too. Burning coals and tobacco. A real example of Brora’s golden age, though certainly a climb down from the immensity of the early Special Releases, this one wears kid gloves.
Palate: Avalanche of flavours. Huge whisky that’s straining to prove it’s still got it all – and it has. Loads of thick goopy amber resins and scrapped bark. Thick dripping peat, black and oily as sludge. This characteristic clean but ripe farminess that screams early 70s. May have forgotten to say it’s immense… Coals, ashes, a seared ham hock on fire. Various thick oils, sea salt, hot granite. Ascerbic with preserved lemons and brine. Salty nets and wet wool. Lit cigars and puffer smoke. One for the ages. If there was a niggling doubt on the nose, the explosion that is the palate sets things right.
Finish: Does not. Goes on and on, very impressive with these preserved salty-sweet citrus skins, smoke and phenolic whispers that creep to your ear that says naughty things like.. what an absolute legend these years were for Brora… and the new stuff may never match the old.
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