What do you get if you take all three bottles from Whisky Sponge’s Decent of Sponge series of Clynelish’s and slosh them all around together? This 3rd Secret Edition - which looks at bringing together the trio in a final, smaller (131 bottle), reduced (53% ABV) vatting. Fruit. Wax. Time. Says the label. Let’s see…
Nose: A cup of freshly made mocha, balsamic strawberries, baked apricots and orange peels sit within a clearly texture whisky with greases and waxes still very apparent. Preserved lemons and acacia honey join background earthiness from soils dried dunnage stored oak. Water reveals milk chocolate and honeydew melon slices together with golden tobacco leaves.
Taste: Arriving with weight – candle wax, pan fats and walnut oil then moving into fruitier notes of St Clements (orange and lemon) together with graphite, granite, salt and pepper. The development is broader with blackcurrant jelly and walnut skins sitting alongside milky coffee, cough syrupy and mentholated oakiness. Reduction produces a fatty/greasy (less waxy) texture with chalk, limestone and dry earth sitting with syrupy apricots and assorted citrus fruits.
Finish: Very long and expressing cask pepper and char alongside minerality.
An utterly agreeable amalgamation where each of the elements from the three casks can clearly be discerned – and yet their integration feels altogether natural. The sherry, particularly from Edition 40 has been subdued to a level where it harmonises and enhances the spirit as opposed to sitting atop of it – whilst the overall level of detail has been broadened. Positioned and promoted as ‘a bit of fun’ – but actually very artfully composed indeed.