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BTC 2014 #9

Blind Tasting Competition #9: Blair Athol 1988 Van Wees

15 December 2014 1 comment Article Blair Athol, Highlands, Scotland, Tasting Notes

It smells like sample #9 of the Blind Tasting Competition might be an interesting whisky, in the sense that I think this is whisky that was bottled a while ago. We might have some Old Bottle Effect.

Blair Athol 1988/2014 (46%, Van Wees, C#6918)

Nose: Some sulphur, but not too overwhelming, but doesn’t really add anything. A hint of citrus and plenty of oak. Coffee powder and dark spices. It’s also a dusty whisky with a soy aroma.
Taste: Pepper, dark chocolate. Spicy with nutmeg and cloves. Oak again, a bit dry. Adding water makes it even drier and also more spicy.
Finish: A bit short. Dry, spicy, a hint of smoke and some ash.

Rating: 82

The dusty quality of this whisky and the soy make me think this is an older bottling. My most memorable encounter with OBE is this Macallan 10yo bottled in 1985. But I don’t think this is a Macallan. My gut says Mortlach (something reminds me of this Mortlach 21yo), so that’s what I’m going for. A 12yo bottled at 43 percent.

Blegh, turns out I was way off. No Old Bottle Effect, because this Blair Athol was bottled just at the start of 2014. Zero points for me today, and I’m no longer first in the competition.

Thijs Klaverstijn Kingairloch 3
Thijs Klaverstijn

Thijs is a spirits writer and accredited liquorist from The Netherlands. He runs the blog Words of Whisky and contributes to a number of Dutch and international publications.

Tags: blair athol, blind tasting competition, highlands, van wees

1 comment

  • Sjoerd de Haan 15 December 2014 at 10:56 - Reply

    It’s funny how vastly different our tasting notes are…

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Words of Whisky is the blog of Thijs Klaverstijn, a freelance writer and journalist from Twente, a region in the east of The Netherlands. He's been drinking whisky for quite some time now, but a visit to Scotland in the summer of 2013 has turned his love for whisky into somewhat of an obsession. This blog serves as an outlet for that obsession.

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