Distillery: Glenlivet

Region: Speyside

Price: N/A (opened 1L travel retail bottle gifted by a relative)

Cask Type: First and second-fill American Oak and ex-Sherry casks (from the Glenlivet website).

ABV: 43%

Color: 1.1, burnished

Nose: Prune juice, preserved plums, mirin, cornflakes.

Palate: Satisfyingly thick body, just a hair less than the Craigellachie 17 as I swallow. Pokka sweetened jasmine green tea, redcurrant juice, puffed rice, thin and sterile tannins. I suspect this may be corked. The malt is disappointingly wispy. As it goes down, cookies and cream ice cream and cream cheese.

Finish: Smooth, warming, finish with subliminal lingering orange juice. Everything else quickly fades: hint of wet sourdough, just a little dragonfruit, honey. It could be worse. edit: a bit of grape soda too.

Conclusion: Way too thin and simple on the nose, but perhaps this has been distorted by the glorious nose on the cask strength Craigellachie IB I recently drank. The palate starts off with some promise, which is let down by a conspicuously subdued and tasteless middle. Disappointment turns into frustration when the palate flickers back to life just when I am swallowing. Moreover, I like my Speysides to have rich, honeyed malt, but balanced out gracefully. This is not. The malt is wispy and barely discernible right when it needs to be front and centre, when the palate is at its climax. It takes a lot to tease out the promise in the palate - I was actively trying to be charitable to this. This definitely collapses in the middle, book-ended by an appetising start and a finish that slightly redeems it.

That said, the tannins were not of the aromatic sort associated with, say, grape skin or over-steeped tea. They had a hollowness and sterility to them that, together with the puffed rice notes, were what made me suspect it was corked. The fill level for this was below the neck, the cork sealed somewhat loosely, had what seemed like liquid stains and it had already been opened. I think my relative opened it, had a dram, tucked it away and then kindly gave it to us some time after. If it is not corked, then the Glenlivet 18 OB has this odd mismatch between texture and palate - the palate is much more watery than the texture would indicate.

If it were named by the SMWS: The Centre Cannot Hold

Score: 68

(Side note: I should actually downgrade the Auchentoshan Three Wood I gave a 71 to not too long ago because it's even more hopeless. Recently had a second dram and it left me parched and with a powdery feeling. It also smells like nail varnish, cheap Ikea pine and car freshener.)

Scotch Review #6, Whisky Network Review #7

H.Y.