Whisky : Mortlach 32 Year SMWS 76.148 “Grilled lemon-garlic elk steak”

Country/Region : Scotland/Speyside

ABV : 51.6%

Cask : Ex-Bourbon Hogshead (30Y), First Fill Oloroso Hogshead (2Y)

Age : 32 Years (Distilled 22 Sept. 1987)

Nose : Quiet and subdued; opened with notes of cigar box and leather before an undercurrent of fruits emerged with watery perfume, melon rind, sweet cucumber, and roasted lemons.  Meaty notes of braised lamb and charred roast paired off with dried berries, mint, and an herbaceous quality with time to breath.

Palate : Light, though oily, with notes of sweet balsamic reduction, white pepper, and roasted meat.  Herb crusted leg of lamb, or iron rich venison, gave way to a layer of dried fruits and sweet-sour candies.  Crack Seed candy store molasses hard candies, vanilla cake batter, and white li mui— a sweet, salty, and often sour preserved plum.  Water brought out more chrysanthemum tea, especially toward the finish.

Finish : Medium length, dry with crask seed store white li mui.

Score : 4

Mental Image : Crack Seed Store Memories

Notes : I am not sure where to being with this dram.

This was priced well above what our local whisky club usually includes in tastings, but we decided to gamble.  One member was absolutely smitten with this bottle from the get go and determined that we include it in a lineup.  While it ballooned the price a bit more than normal, we found a way to include it and satisfy our curiosity.  Frankly, there was almost no world in which this was going to live up to the hype or the price.  It was good— it was unique— but it might have well been a grilled garlic-lemon unicorn flank.  Judged against the rest of the lineup when we poured it, almost every taster preferred something else, even without considering price.

Crack Seed stores once felt nearly ubiquitous in Hawaii.  They were little encapsulations of the mixed cultural heritage of different island communities as they sold snacks and candies with East and Southeast Asian origins.  Their pickled, salted, or dried fruits were the prize of many of a child after school— though I was personally always drawn toward slushies… hardly a specialty, but nice and cool on a hot day.  This genre of local candy store is not totally gone, but they are not nearly as common as they once were.  While lots of convenience stores sells mass produced candies in a similar vein, the secret family recipes and spice mixes are mostly now nothing more than memories.

This dram dredged up some really sweet nostalgia, but that was not enough for me to really want to score it more than roughly average.  Price definitely weighed heavily on my scoring here.  I usually do not think  much about price— I often do not know it off the top of my head— but this time I found it very hard to forget much less ignore.  

This was not a bad dream, there was a nice meatiness that built over time and with each sip the dram became deeper and the finish longer.  Certainly flavor compounds must have begun coating the palate as the dram began quietly and slowly built to a crescendo.  There were clear and distinct layers of flavor as the dram moved between meatiness-balsamic into crack seed store candies and fruits.

I do not know where to end with this review either; the dram was nice for an event, but I am fine never tasting it again.