Whisky : Penderyn 8 Year SMWS 128.10 “Dramming in the upside down”

Country/Region : Wales

ABV : 59.3%

Cask : 2nd Fill Ex-Bourbon

Age : 8 Years (Distilled 19 March 2011)

Nose :  Bubblegum, beeswax, and fruit.  Freshly spun bubble gum flavored cotton candy came to mind along with sugary sides of ginger ale, vanilla frosting, and cupcake sprinkles.  Fruit Stripe gum hinted toward fruits with bruised plums and apricots while heady notes of bubblegum remained in charge.

Palate : Medium to light body with bright sugary notes of bubble gum, blue vanilla syrup, and lychee.  Sweet tinned tropical fruits with notes of peaches, pineapples, lychees, and guava in syrup.  Bubble gum notes waited on the back end along with vanilla cupcake frosting and sugary rainbow sprinkles.

Finish :  Lingering tinned fruits and sugar.

Score : 3

Mental Image : The Juice at the bottom of a Mixed Fruit Cup

Notes :  SMWS described this as a whisky from the Upside Down where the drams are full of funky barley sugars and esters.  They were not wrong— this was absolutely funky and estery— but I find the prospect of the Upside Down universe to be all the more terrifying for it.  

This dram was dominated by sweet sugar notes of cake frosting and bubble gum, while there were some nice tropical fruits, especially on the palate, the volume on those bubble gum notes ultimately drowned out and distracted from the rest.  Yet, the bubble gum notes did not quite taste real and reminded me more of floride at the dentist’s office.

Overall, this struck me as a potentially divisive dram.  It bore some semblance to the prior SMWS Penderyn that I fawned over, however my scoring went in the complete opposite direction with this as the profile did not bring up sweet memories of old fashioned desserts and tinned fruits— rather it was the discomfort of a cleaning with the dentist.