Royal Lochnagar Selected Reserve (OB, 75cl)
A couple of years ago I bought the modern version of the Royal Lochnagar Selected Reserve, and I quite liked it. But the Selected Reserve has been around for a long time, at least since the early nineties. So I was eager to try one of the older bottlings, the ones that used to some in a wooden box instead of a cardboard one.
Sometime last year I picked up an older bottle. Now the exact bottling date I don’t know, because the wooden box (which is numbered) didn’t come with it. But I’m fairly confident it was bottled over 20 years ago. It doesn’t really matter anyway, because when you try this whisky, it is very obvious there is some really old distillate in there.
Royal Lochnagar Selected Reserve (43%, OB, 75cl)
Nose: Big on the sherry, with some furniture polish, old leather and a waxy element. Roasted almonds, chocolate pralines and fudge after that. There’s a touch of soy sauce and mushrooms.
Taste: The palate is resembled the nose a lot, with especially the almonds and pralines giving an encore, as well as the leather. But there’s also some ginger now, as well as a hint of peat smoke.
Finish: The peat smoke and the spiciness linger for a bit, then they make room for chocolate and a malty sweetness.
Rating: 90
This whisky makes you nostalgic. A great example of old-style sherried whiskies from the sixties. I’m willing to bet a large portion of the casks used for this vatting are from that era. With a bit of luck you can still find these at auction for 150 euro, sometimes even less, which I think is great value for money.
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.
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