- Raided Score: 84
- Publication: Whisky Advocate
- Excerpt: Balvenie’s signature sweetness comes across like soft brown Demerara sugar before it shifts into forest floor, mulch, nut, and dried berries.
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- Raided Score: 82
- Publication: whiskyfun
- Excerpt: Some very well made modern malt whisky. Feels like some ‘work’ has been done on it, it’s probably not only about time.
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- Raided Score: 86
- Publication: Distiller
- Excerpt: A couple drops of water tamed the heat, teased out some orange peel, encouraged an accent of salinity and brought everything into better balance--but doused the campfire.
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- Raided Score: 77
- Publication: Modern Thirst
- Excerpt: Such high hopes for this bottle, but it did not deliver. The tainting by the sulphur from the sherry casking masked any other positives of this bottling.
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- Raided Score: 96
- Publication: Drinkhacker
- Excerpt: This whisky is firing on all cylinders, and as it continues to open up it starts to show gentle smoke notes, a touch of iodine, and a return of roasted grain character (think really good pretzels). The sherry’s what sticks with you the most, however, hanging on for an epic finish.
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- Raided Score: 90
- Publication: Wine Enthusiast
- Excerpt: The palate is boldly smoky and relatively dry, with a lift of iodine and sea breeze, plus vanilla, praline and a spicy, rather fiery finish. The production size is no more than 650 bottles drawn from a single cask.
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- Raided Score: 90
- Publication: Whiskey Raiders
- Excerpt: Overall it's a sweet dram and more focused in the light, floral, fruity corner of the sherry arena, rather than the dense sticky cocoa corner of the arena. Nothing wrong with that.
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Raided Score is a conversion from an external site's score, to our in house uniform scoring system. Please see the FAQ for more.
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Nose:
Honey, dough, yeast bakery sweets. Passion fruits, figs, plumbs, date fruit and sweet chocolate.
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Taste:
Medium and oily, the extra proof does very well with this one and I appreciate it. Sweet plum forward with a light dose of oak and cocoa. More honey, more doughnut sweets follow. Overall its a sweet dram and more focused in the light, floral, fruity corner of the sherry arena, rather than the dense sticky cocoa corner of the arena. Nothing wrong with that.
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Finish:
Long, warming, sweet and syrupy with only a little hint of prickly proof. This dram behaves very well on the way out.
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Overall:
I really like this dram. There's only one problem....its $115-$135 where I live and that's absurd. This dram is delicious and brings a ton to the table but pricing like that is bonkers and reminds me why its not in my collection. I really enjoy it though and it's sweeter look at sherry always leaves me appreciating any samples I try. For these reasons, I'm giving it a Rank 6.
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Score:
6
- Our in house critic rates spirits on a scale of 0-10 (10 best) and is aggregated the same as external sources