Name: The Balvenie Single Barrel Sherry Cask 15-Year-Old
Color: Yellow
Nose: Malt, flowers, lemon, wood
Taste: Malt, lemon, sherry sweet, almonds, oak
The Balvenie Distillery is a Speyside scotch from Dufftown, Scotland. It was founded in 1886 by William Grant & Sons and I have not had a bad experience with any Balvenie, but, you have to pay for the pleasure of Balvenie’s company in your glass. The Core Expressions are the ones you would regularly see on the shelf are DoubleWood 12, Caribbean Cask 14, DoubleWood 17, and PortWood 21. Other expressions or “ranges” are numerous and include Stories, Connoisseur, Rare & Precious, Travel Retail, Limited, and Vintage. There are too many to list in this review and prices range from $60 to $50,000.
This Balvenie Single Barrel Sherry Cask 15-Year-Old Scotch comes from Cask #15636 and is bottle #690 of 800 bottles that originate per barrel and is bottled at 47.8% abv. The bottles are hand labeled and no two casks are the same, but I bet they all taste similar at the end of the day.
This scotch is very clean tasting with good, sweeter sherry notes, but not that candy sweet taste that a lot of scotches have been releasing over the last few years. The oak taste is not to over powerful, and the overall balance is soft with nice flavor notes. The color of the scotch looks natural, but I could not confirm if it is or not. I wonder if they made this for the less experience scotch drinker who likes a sweeter dram, but, I doubt that at the cost.
Priced around $150+ and worth the money, but if you are not experience with The Balvenie start with the DoubleWood 12 to save a few dollars. A big thanks to Barry for letting me sample this one!
If you like it, drink it! – Christopher
If you like it, drink it!
