OB 16yo 46% - An Cnoc

[Nick Brown]

N: fruit, apples, apricot, pear, new make, sickly

T: icing sugar, dry, woody, sour, lemon, very bitter

F: hot and dry, coffee, slightly waxy, smoke coming through, orange, apple.

Knockdhu is not my favourite distillery, and this was not my favourite Knockdhu.

[Mark C]

Colour: Light gold.

Nose: Soft citrus, not sharp. A little vanilla and fudge. A touch of spirit or oil, something like a faint whiff of varnish or sweet paint.

Mouth: Salty and a bit bitter. Also a touch sweet and zesty.

Finish: Bitter chocolate, toffee, burnt sugar. Puff candy.

Comments: An interesting dram - fairly bitter on the finish but not overpowering. For those who like puff candy.

[mongo]

posting about this whisky on another thread made me want to try it again.

nose: refreshing citrus, mostly lemon; a little sweetness--maybe lemon pound cake? a few minutes in, intensely zesty lemon pie

palate: lemon fizz turning astringent, then sweet, then woody; almost like a limoncello.

finish: medium; zesty; some bitter wood, but not overbearing; some sweetness at the end

notes: quite nice; a refreshing summer malt, i think. elsewhere i've compared the glenlivet 18 and the 16yo nadurra to it based on taste memory; not a good comparison, i don't think (however, i didn't take precise notes the first few times i had this, and the bottle is now at 50%, so some transformations may have taken place). i wouldn't say this is a great whisky but it is different from everything else on my shelves, and so it's a nice change of pace.

[C57]

N: Sweet crisp barley and some vanilla. A warm aroma

P: The barley and vanilla plus a little honey. A little bit waxy in texture (no beeswax in the flavour, to me)

F: Gets more interesting here. The finish has some bitterness, but I find it quite juicy and there is a trace of, what, anise? Yes I think so.

Overall, I like this, probably more than my colleagues posting above. I think it's good.

{Edit: After mongo's comment, re-tasted tonight.
N: yes some slight lemon in there (perhaps I'm less sensitive to citrus fruits though I've never noticed that before)
P: Well, yes some citrus, but the re-taste really revealed that the palate has liquorice.
F: No citrus here but the anise from yesterday is now pretty stong liquorice.

Well, just goes to show. This bottle is almost gone, and I often leave notes to near the end. But despite that, I still found something different today. I think I probably noticed all these characteristics before, but when I wrote the note, I wasn't getting them. To me it shows how the experience of a given malt can change day to day (presumably depending on a number of other factors).}

[mongo]

interesting that you didn't get any citrus at all. i suspect we had different batches (my bottle is long gone so i can't check).

[Willie JJ]

Nose: Honey and lemon cough sweets, star anise, light and refreshing. Grassy with lemon refreshers. There's some dried oak there. Like a carpenter's workshop in the summer, with a pile of malted barley in the corner. Clean as a whistle and quite charming.
Taste: Zingy lemon refreshers, surrounded by a multitude of tiny popping spice bombs. The honey is there on the palate too, but it's finely spread and delicate. Sugar sparkles in the background amongst more light oak.
Finish: Seems like it dies quite quickly, but then it begins to wash your palate with brown sugar, cinammon and chewed pencil. The more you drink the woodier the finish gets, but it remains delicate.
Comments: For years I've been trying to get folk to notice this stuff. It's not going to startle you in a festival amongst all those big hitters (although I've always thought it was good), but sit down with a bottle of this and you won't regret it. This was the last dregs of the bottle and another one will have to come soon. I hope the current batch is as good.