Spice fans ahoy! Is Watt Whisky’s rye barrel finish (14 months) the piquant dram you’re looking for? An outturn of 222 bottles and an ABV of 59.2% is what you’re looking at for this 2010 12 year old Tormore. Still available from The Whisky Exchange for £72.95.
Nose: Foam bananas and Nesquik powder (really banana forward indeed) together with pear drops and lychee. Pink wafer biscuits join cask influences from vanilla and white pepper. Reduction offers us banana slices atop a bowl of milky bran flakes together with crumbled biscuit.
Taste: The arrival delivers vibrant fruitiness from the Tormore spirit – cooking apples, pear drops (big isoamyl acetate here) and banana peels. Then it’s spice time with pepper, nutmeg and plenty of chilli pepper heat. In the background asides of creamy vanilla custard offer a more temperate development. Dilution expresses softer spices with additional orchard fruit notes and some grapefruit sourness.
Finish: Medium with vanilla and toffee-led sweetness from the cask and piquant spicing – also from the cask.
There’s just enough fruity Tormore here to stand up against the rye-cask impact – though you’ll need to be a fan of spicy whiskies to get the most out of this. That said, the banana aroma and flavour is particularly characterful and might be worth the price of admission for a dram alone.