 SMWS G9.1 Loch Lomond 11yo  
Loch Lomond Distillery - Alexandria, West Dunbartonshire |
Paint a picture...
Clambering up a wooden ladder, you look around across the orchard apple trees to see the sun bouncing low off the nearby barley fields. As you pick more apples from the tree, you pull out a Highland toffee bar from your pocket. Not known for balance, this small deviation sends you into a wobble that you can't recover from, falling off the ladder and hitting the ground with a bit of a thud.
Your head spinning, you wake in a daze to find yourself as a child, on holioday in France. It's warm and you're sat outside, choosing your soft drink with your family. As your ordered Appletiser arrives, the smell snaps your brain back into life and you're back in the orchard, as the sun begins to set.
Come on now, what are the key flavours?
Smells of apple (sweets), Appletiser, moving towards a mintiness (in a toothpaste sense), fresh flavours, salty toffee, the pleasure of marker pens, banana toffee. Tastes of toasted barley, fresh & fruity, mascarpone (in a cheesecake), roast lamb, buttery, not unlike a Ben Nevis single malt or a Glenfarclas. It had an enjoyable, slightly biting, fizz.
Seriously though, any good?
This is great because it's so different, enjoyably fresh & fruity. It's the first grain whisky I've tried that isn't dominated by corn - usually distilleries add 10% malt to the otehrwise maize spirit, but I sense the added malt is much larger here, or the initial grain wasn't maize. It wasn't just good because it was interesting - I've tasted interesting grain whiskies before and still scored them low - this was a very pleasant drink indeed.
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Tasted on: 23/06/13
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  A rich colour for its age, but a much fresher palate. |
In summary:
Fresh, appley and fizzy - very different grain whisky and also a very tasty one. Perfect to be added to a (blind) tasting.