Talisker 10 yo ‘map label’ 45.8% ~circa early 90s vs Talisker Gordon & MacPhail 100 proof ~ circa 80s bottling
Talisker 10 yo ‘map label’ 45.8% ~circa early 90s bottling
I’ve personally found the current 10 yo to be somewhat unpolished but this old beauty reminded me how much depth Talisker is capable of. This is deeply saline. Salt spray garnished with seaweed, but not a medicinal sort of Islay seaweed, perhaps a fresh Japanese red seaweed. A boatloads of dry peat with aspects of tobacco, compost, pine bark, pulled roots and cold cardamom tea. Here and there, quick flashes of hot menthol, thin minerals and smouldering fire. Unfortunately not the longest on the tongue but the salt, lively menthol, black pepper and minerals bow out convincingly. 90 pts
Talisker Gordon & MacPhail 100 proof ~ circa 80s bottling
Globally different. This is powerful and really quite peaty – a root and dry, fistful of crumbled leaf, dried grass between teeth sort of peat, yet a step back from the abyss of the geological basenotes that define the heaviest Islays. Aromatic in a vetiver roots caked in phenols way, totally saline and redolent of engine oil, seaweed, medical ointments and dried lemon. A nose that seems mired in the depths of a black oozing sea bed of mud, iodine, and salt crystals. On the tongue its cigar ash, salted plums, seawater, peppermint and menthol lozenges. 93 pts
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