Aultmore 12 Years Old - A Review

 

Aultmore 12 Years Old - A Review

"Aultmore of the Foggie Moss"

Recently, I received this delightful Single Malt as a present from a family member passing through Luton Airport Travel Retail on his way to Ben Gurion.

It comes in a most unique and delightfully quixotic Victorian style bottle. The Single Malt whisky is a genuine Integrity bottling, that is, being bottled at 46% abv, is Non-Chill-Filtered and Natural Colour. Oh, and what a colour! Its pale golden yellow tint reflecting the fact that this 12-Year-Old is exclusively matured in Ex-Bourbon barrels.

(Note, the other expressions in the Aultmore range, namely the 18-Year-Old, 21 and 25-Year-Old, all have a percentage of Ex-Sherry casks in their vattings, so please don’t ask why I won’t be reviewing them).

Bacardi, who owns Aultmore (as well as four other distilleries), trades under the name “Dewars and Sons” in Scotland.  The other Dewars’ Single Malts being Aberfeldy, Craigellachie, Macduff and Royal Brackla. Like all its sister distilleries (with the exception of Aberfeldy), Aultmore flies very much under the RADAR so to speak (that is, hardly anyone who isn’t a whisky nerd has ever heard of them).

See my historical review of Craigellachie 13 where I talk about how Bacardi under-utilise their distilleries. Instead of recognising their distilleries as the tourist goldmines they are, being situated in the heart of the picturesque Whisky tourist region of Speyside, they look at them as mere whisky producing factories.

As mentioned, when I wrote about my visit to the stunningly beautiful Craigellachie distillery a few years ago (with its outside stills and old-fashioned romantic looking copper worm-tubs), there are no distillery tours offered, no visitors centre and no distillery shop. Dewars and Sons (Bacardi) could be providing more jobs to the local community as well as raking in the money, but instead, for some reason, choose to keep their distilleries in total obscurity.

Aultmore distillery is less than 20 miles from Craigellachie distillery and suffers the same fate. If you look at other distilleries in the immediate local area (like Strathisla, Aberlour, Macallan, Glenfiddich etc), all recognisable names to you I’m sure, they all have visitors’ centres.  With tens of thousands of visitors every year, spending their Pounds, Dollars, Euros, Yen and Shekels there, whisky tourism has proved to be an important part of the whisky industry. So, you really have to scratch your head in puzzlement and disbelief at Bacardi’s decision, or lack of it, not to open their distilleries up to the public.

Bacardi only moved into the Scotch Whisky industry in the early 2000s when they bought up the famous and historic “Dewars & Sons” portfolio from Diageo, (who I believe were forced to sell due to legal reasons, something to do with the Monopolies commission?). By the way, John Dewar the man, was one of the founding fathers of the Scotch Whisky Blend industry back in the 19^th century and it’s their Blended Whisky brands which Bacardi concentrates on today and not the individual distilleries which supply the malt whisky. It seems as if Bacardi have simply never taken the time to truly understand that there is a huge Single Malt Whisky business out there as well.

Bacardi, obviously famous for its White Rum, is (according to Wikipedia), the largest privately owned and family run Spirits business in the world. Originally from Cuba, the family moved to the Bahamas in the 1960s where their headquarters is today.

Recently however, Bacardi have started to tentatively invest in a few Single Malt bottlings from its distilleries, but with little promotion or fanfare. You’ll find them in Whisky Specialist shops and surprisingly, the ever-declining Travel Retail market.

Packaging and Design

So, let’s take a closer look at the packaging and bottle.

I must say I really like the look of the package as a whole. When other companies are frantically rebranding their bottle packaging to look as bland and generic as possible, Aultmore stands out as having a unique and instantly recognisable packaging that really seems to stand out on the shelf.

The anti-tamper paper security strip which usually goes over the cork stopper, is also present over the tin cap which goes over the carboard cylinder. That’s a nice touch. The overall design of the text and graphics is minimalist, clean and attractive.

A Smooth Nip

The label calls the distillery “Aultmore of the Foggie Moss”. The packaging loses marks however, by using the dreaded word “Smooth” on its front label.

"...the whisky’s exceptional smoothness reveals why industry insiders accorded it top class status…”.

What this is referring to is the distillery class system Blending companies like Dewars used to rank them with. All it means that this is ranked a good malt for Blends.

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The same dreaded word is used yet again, this time on the back label, to assert that the Aultmore’s “smoothest cleanest taste” is due to the fact that it isn’t peated. Are they saying that peated whiskies cannot be smooth? If you take the standard marketing meaning for this word, that is, it describes a whisky which is easy to drink, doesn’t scratch, burn the throat and does not bite you on the way down, then they seem to contradict themselves in the very next paragraph when they inform you that if you were to be in the local bars (presumably in Moray, Banffshire in Speyside), then you should ask for “a nip of the Old Buckie Road” (as the distillery is situated in Buckie Road). Sorry to be pedantic, but isn’t “nip” a sharp bite usually associated with an excited dog or a description of particularly chilly, sharp biting wind? Are we to understand that Aultmore is “a smooth nip”?

Pure Malt available in the last century?

The marketing nonsense continues.

“Yet for over a century it was only sold in limited editions aimed at [local] collectors”.

Really? Can anyone name any Single Malt Whisky at all, which was sold outside of Scotland and was widely available before the 1960s?

Didn't think so!

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Bottles of “Pure Malt”, as it was called then, was as rare as hens’ teeth. According to Charles Maclean, the noted whisky writer, you could obtain a few good bottles of the “Pure Malt” in central London in exclusive places like Berry Bros & Rudd, Wine and spirits specialist to the Royal Family, or Harrods department store.

In the last 19^th century and early to mid-20th century, it was possible to obtain Laphroaig, Lagavulin, Lochindaal, Glen Moray, Glenlivet, Glentauchers, Glenmorangie, Glenglassaugh and Strathdee in small quantities when available, or to order. That was about it, unless you were willing to shlepp up to Scotland and visit the Independent Bottling Whisky Stores like Gordon & MacPhail, founded in 1895 in Elgin, or Cadenhead’s, established in 1842 in Aberdeen. If you were even more adventurous or were fortunate enough to have been a friend of the local Highland Leird, then you could have gone and bought a cask of Mortlach or Mannochmore from the distillery itself. All legally quite dodgy, but there were ways.

Don’t worry if the whisky is the colour of Wood Sap and is Cloudy!

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The last two lines of the back label redeems itself somewhat by stating that the whisky is “Natural Colour” and that it “takes its colour from the cask’s wood” and goes on to explain that “so slightly varied hues are normal”.

The last line informs us that there has been no Chill-Filtering. 

“We don’t chill filter our whisky;” and ends with the advice to “feel free to add ice and don’t worry if it goes cloudy”.

Excellently worded and goes someway to curtailing the unwarranted concerns of a casual whisky drinker who sees slightly lighter and darker bottles on the shelf, and that if he adds water or ice to his tumbler, then it’s perfectly natural that the whisky will turn hazy.

The Review

Appearance

A lovely light golden Chardonnay yellow.

Quite oily in appearance with nice droplets of whisky sticking to the sides of my Copita Tasting glass.

Nosing and drinking neat, the Aultmore is quite nippy on the nose but to its credit, it can take a lot of water. I added two teaspoons and this seemed to enrich the whisky.

On the Nose

Beeswax Furniture Honey Wood Polish.

Aroma of Fresh Challah Dough.

Flinty.

Lemon Tangy.

Lemon pith and rind.

Crispy Pink Lady Apples, Juicy Green Pears.

Honeycomb Toffee, Vanilla custard, honey dessert,

Lemon curd.

A slight whiff of fresh Green Chilli Pepper heat.

Yellow fruits in a wooden bowl.

Tasting

Crisp, sweet, Pink-Lady apples.

Tart green melon. Lemon and custard tarts.

Lemon Shortcake with drips of honey.

Some Sour Apple Travel Sweet drops.

Lemon and Apple Sherbert.

Refreshing Apple Juice, Soft Walnuts and vanilla custard, new oak wood, some dry vanilla pods and cinnamon on the finish.

What you get with this Aultmore 12 is a lovely balance of First-Fill fresh Bourbon casks and some Refill Ex-Bourbon Casks.

 Conclusion

If you are in the mood for a lovely example of a classic fruity/malty Speyside Ex-Bourbon cask matured Single Malt, with all those traditional classic flavours like apples/pears, vanilla fudge, honey, honeycomb, digestive biscuits and light wood spices, where it’s obvious they have used quality barrels which have not been over charred (which seems to be the trend these days), then this is thr dram for you.

This all translates into a delightfully clean, fresh and full flavoured Single Malt. I hope more people get to try it. Highly recommended.