Whisky: Blend on the Run 29 Year Blended Malt, Whisky Sponge No. 18

Country/Region: Scotland/Blended Malt

ABV: 45.6%

Cask: First Fill Sherry Butt (13Y Finish)

Age: 29 Years (Bottled 2020)

Nose: Dried fruits and lacquered wood presented on the sherry-driven aroma; underlying notions of dusty earth and dried grass; a kiss of salt with anise, brown sugar, and wood smoke.

Palate: Medium-bodied and oily, wood tannins and a robust malt provided good weight to notions of dried fruit, earthy tropical botanical gardens, and a kiss of salt; lychee and mango drifted behind dried salted plums, dried grass, hibiscus tea, and wispy smoke or charred wood; more mentholated tobacco and wood-fired stoves toward the end.

Finish: Medium to long and drying with earth, wood char, and subtle tropical vibes.

Score: 7+ (86)

Mental Image: Magpies’ Garden Picnic

Narrative & Notes: I first tried this blind as part of an advent calendar put together by an online whisky group. The tobacco and tropical fruits accented by a kiss of salt immediately brought Bowmore to mind. Without any hints as to the possible source, I guessed this was a late teen ex-sherry Bowmore… but I hoped it was something cheaper and more affordable because it was lovely. I wondered if it might be a vintage malt, as some of the flavors came across as a bit old-fashioned.

It turns out this was quite old-fashioned, but not in the way I expected! Rather than find a way to explain this myself, here are the words of the venerable Whisky Sponge:

“Many years ago, in what you call the 'good old days', there was an independent bottler called Signatory and it had literally shit loads of cask samples just lying about the place. Dark ones, pale ones, mostly empty ones, full ones. All sorts of delicious and funny things from the bottlings they had been steadily releasing over the previous fifteen or so years. One day, the king of Signatory, a young lad called Andrew who disapproved of carpark BBQs and enjoyed fork lift trucks, decided to sort through all these cask samples and mix the good ones together. The minimum age for these samples had to be 16 years old and they had to be single malt Scottish whiskies. 

Amongst their total was many, many older Signatory bottlings from the 1970s and 1960s - including some famous distilleries and vintages - they all went into the vat and that mixture was then laid to rest in a first fill sherry butt for another 13 years until it was legally 29 years of age.”

Overall, I, too, have occasionally blended a bunch of similar samples of typically good quality to see what would happen— when it works, it can be sublime… when it doesn’t, you have some new drain cleaner. This was no drain cleaner; it was delightful.  I might not have gotten the Christmasy aesthetic from it, but I found plenty to enjoy.

Theme: End-of-Year Favorites

The theme this December 2023 is cleaning the house, and the reviews posted this month are either things I did not get a chance to slide into a theme week earlier this year, drams I have poured to celebrate the holidays and end of the school year, or as part of our online whisky group’s mystery dram advent calendar. These are posted in no particular order!