Riverflow Speyside Single Malt, Morrison and MacKay
Whisky : Riverflow Speyside Single Malt, Morrison and MacKay
Country/Region : Scotland/Speyside
ABV : 46%
Cask : First Fill & Refill Bourbon Barrels
Nose : Fruity, salty, and a little bit funky. Notes of lemon peel and old apples on one side, slightly funky lactic notes and yeasted dough on the other. One the pleasant side, notes of vanilla clotted cream, waxy honeycomb, and grassy hay.
Palate : Medium bodied and fatty— almost lactic or buttery fats— with a profile that varied between underripe fruits, cream, and grass. Malty notes hit first with hints of salt and creamy funk; semi-sweet biscuits, tepid butter, and an olive tapenade. Cream of wheat cereal came to mind with tart crab apples and unripened mango or plums. Grassy notes of wheat grass and hay lingered toward the end.
Finish : Lingering funky sweetness.
Score : 2
Mental Image : Cleaning the Rabbit Hutch
Notes : I tried this blind thanks to u/throwboats over on reddit and initially guess it was some kind of Laddie based on the weird lactic notes I picked up as well as the subtle grassy sweetness and salt. I was way off and this ended up being a mystery speyside single malt and not one I ever want to try again. I do not usually look up other reviews or tasting notes until after I have posted my own and then sometimes I will poke around a bit to see how others felt about a bottle. I make exceptions when I am uncertain if my palate was off and I have come up with some weird notes— especially when I really do not like something. So I did a little searching for this.
Holborndrinker on whiskybase described the taste as “fresh straw from a rabbit [hutch] which has been freshly pissed on (by the rabbit that is).” He scored this a 79 overall which, according to whiskybase, puts this in near the bottle 25% of his fairly prodigious review record. I absolutely agree on both accounts— I can see exactly what he’s getting at with rabbit piss and fresh straw and I totally agree this is not a good whisky. There are plenty worse out there and I think this would be just fine as a mixer, but I would never drink this again unless circumstances were dire and I had no other reasonable options.
Malt Review pinned this as an Auchroisk due to some inside information. Based on some of the creamy notes and the overall character, I think that was an excellent guess and one I certainly would go along with. Malt Review did rate this a bit higher than I and gave it a 5/10 while stating of the flavor profile that it was “Inoffensive. A dram that won’t offend or take you anywhere new.” My tastes do not particularly align with any of the great writers over there, but I was pretty surprised with just how much I disliked this compared to their fairly pedestrian rating for it.
Overall, your mileage may vary, but between my low rating and a heap of average ones I would not expect too much.
Image Credit : Master of Malt
