Whisky: Glen Scotia 11 Year SMWS 93.118 “Aladdin's Cave”

Country/Region: Scotland/Campbeltown

ABV: 57.6%

Cask: First Fill Bourbon Barrel

Age: 11 Year (Distilled 19 June 2007)

Nose: Maritime and fruit with hints of seafood. Sweet sea breezes on a sunny day; with the aroma, I imagined walking the shoreline past grilling stations and bubbling stock pots: salty-sweet glazed unagi, shrimp, and crab shells boiling away. The salty breeze blew in sweeter notes of pears, apricots, winter melon, and pineapple cakes (which are sometimes just pineapple-flavored winter melon).

Palate: Medium-bodied and bright with sweet maritime notes of pineapple cakes, honey, melon, and hints of herbal mint. The wife picked out apricot and green apple with hints of a creamy mango custard. Briny maritime notes ran behind sticky sweet cakes and desserts. A lovely creaminess developed at the end and brought to mind mango bingsoo— shave ice topped with a snowcap of sweetened condensed milk and hints of passionfruit.

Finish: Lingering notes of honey and maritime salt, mildly drying.

Score: 7

Mental Image: Tropical Bingsoo Binge

Notes: I do not know what this dram does with Aladdin’s Cave. I wondered if it was a generational thing— as sometimes understanding the SMWS pop culture references hinge on being on the right side of a generational divide. As a child of the 90s, I imagined Disney’s depiction of the cave: hidden in the shifting sands of a lion’s mouth and overflowing with golden treasure. Just as Aladdin, or Abu anyway, lost himself among the treasures of the cave and the possibilities of wealth… I never found the meaning behind the name.

Immensely tropical on the palate, the aroma coyly hinted at the buffet of sweet, creamy fruits that awaited. The nose lingered on sweet maritime grilled meats and bubbling stocks, with late developing pear and pineapple pastries. The palate was the inverse— tropical fruits poured out of the glass with delicious sticky pastries and creamy shaved ice with only a hint of maritime influence in the background. The SMWS tasters noted a lot more tobacco on the dram; I got a whiff of that on the palate, but mainly in the background.

Overall, not the most complex Glen Scotia I have had, but delicious. The first time I tasted it, I completely forgot to add water to the glass as the malt was syrupy smooth without any real spirited heat or off-notes. A few drops toned down the spirit and the salt so that the fruit stood out even more; some may find that advantageous, but I preferred keeping the additional maritime complexity without water. Though I love my funky Glen Scotia, this nailed the tropical unpeated profile.    

Image Credit: Whisky Auctioneer