What a beautiful olfactory spectrum.

whiskyfun

Ben Nevis 21 yo 1998/2019 (55.4%, Hidden Spirits, sherry, cask #BN9819, 279 bottles) Five stars
Do the 1998s match the 1996s? Let’s see… Colour: deep gold. Nose: meats this time, soy sauce, jamon iberico, glutamate, bouillons, a little leather and some tobacco, then damp plaster and drops of Thai sauce. Look, I know there are probably thousands of different Thai sauces, but there, the red ones that you would pour over any stewed crab claw. What’s the name again? With water: perfect dry nose, or when the cask and the distillate did complement each other to perfection. Blue Mountain coffee, crude cocoa, old walnuts (no one in particular, lol), palo cortado, whiffs of exhaust fumes, umami sauce..; Could be that BN and dry oxidative sherry would just tango to perfection when the proportions are right. Mouth (neat): simply further fortified oloroso. Or distilled oloroso? I shall try to do that one day, as sherry’s become so cheap (which is totally unjust and would make you lose faith in the drinking mankind). With water: the rarest chocolates, the best coffees, and some just perfect salty, umami-y brown sauces. Finish: long and much saltier, with a bit of Ben Nevis’s trademark ‘soft’ dirtiness. So not just vanilla-ed ethanol. Monosodium glutamate. Comments: the saltiness keeps growing even after the aftertaste. I would happily tell you more about this dram but both the wee bottle and the glass are now empty. *** carried away ***
SGP:462 - 91 points.

Way too much bad sulphur for my taste.