Auchentoshan 1978 18-year-old 58.8% Dram #28

With this Auchentoshan I'm reverting to sweet alcoholic memory as opposed to my imagination. It is impossible, after the dispensation of first-hand experience, not to sensorily relive your time at a distillery. Each one is so unique, and so earnest is my desire to absorb and process all that is about me, only just short of leaping into a washback, that with each dram which can trace its origins back to that site, the place, the people and the atmosphere are evoked.

Nothing has as yet been a truer reflection of the above than the Auchentoshan 1978. As my visit in September of last year for the purposes of my eighteenth birthday came to an end and I decided that the fee for drawing my own dram from a cask and bottling it was just a little beyond my means, we debated in the wonderful visitors' centre what expression we should take home as a souvenir of our excellent tour (apart from the smile, obviously). By this time I had already tasted the Classic, the 18-year-old (and a Bowmore 12-year-old to compare), the Three Wood and the Limited Edition Oloroso 18-year-old. Therefore, my system was completely acclimatised to the Auchentoshan style and whilst it took a comfort break, my parents bought for me a bottle of this, only available at the distillery.

Since, there has been a measure of the whisky on four select occasions (I would not recommend this as an aperitif unless you have a very small measure with quite a lot of water), each of which have reminded me so vividly of the neat, functional distillery and the magical fog created by tortured barley.

As a marriage of thirteen Sherry butts, this is one of the few malts to have seduced me on appearances alone. Whether you take my descriptions of rich honey gold or golden syrup, what is assured is that this looks as softly sweet as a sniff and a sip will later prove it to be. In the nose you are struck immediately by a light, blooming sweetness, typical of Auchentoshan's triple distillation cycles and the excellent woods which can be filled up to three times. At 58.8%, an undiluted inhalation alludes to the booziest trifle ever. Water imparts an entirely different character. The Sherry deepens as the cask asserts its affect but the malt, light and zesty, is the star performer. There is evidence of delicious praline shortbread, as well.

Anyone familiar with the Rocky biscuits should mark their particular caramel flavour in the palate. Sherry and chocolate envelope each other and what seems like coconut oil coats the mouth. I'm transported back to the washback room.

The finish is exquisite with the juiciest summer fruits. It is after the whisky has been swallowed that the qualities of its core ingredients and their maturation stewards undergo the most lovely interchanges. There is a grape-y character that is somehow jam-like but this, very very slowly, dissipates and descends into an underlayer of rich grains. At the very end, it is almost as if you had been drinking from the cask as you mull over the sweet sticky oak.

There is just one complaint with this malt as far as I can see. Having been in the bottle for twelve years before I got hold of it, the alcohol has got to the cork. It hasn't quite disintegrated, but little flakes of it bob in the amber ocean and do lend a dry, fibrous note. Such is life, though, eh?