Interesting and forgettable.

Here’s a party trick, make a whisky that on initial tasting really gets the nogin jogging and the tastebuds firing on all cylinders but after a short while settles down to become a rather forgettable and mundane dram. How’s that possible?

This is the first Scapa I’ve ever tasted and I have to admit, I was expecting something more characterful and interesting. The first few glasses delivered that, there’s all sorts of things going on in the glass (ignore the nose, it’s pretty but mundane), lemon rinds, altoids, fresh oak, some kind of orange oil way off in the background, vanilla and pepper. And then something changes.

I’m not sure what happens but it becomes rather dull and uninteresting. It’s not a bad whisky by any means but you get this distinct feeling that you’re drinking something without a discernible identity. It’s the kind of scotch to drink because you have to because it’s that or Bell’s, rather than you want to.

However, I won’t be deterred. This rather average NAS could very well be the worst thing Scapa do! Here’s hoping.

https://whiskylovingpianist.wordpress.com/2018/03/02/on-location-scapa/

[Batch unknown] July 2017

N: Mildly sweet, gingery malty>honeyed spirit.
T: Arrives fairly innocuously without any dram, developing on a chocolate/maltiness.
F: Short/medium finish on sweetish ginger. Doesn’t mind a drop of water.
C: Really not too bad, not spirity nor immature. I needed more time with it but found this on par with the new HP 10yo [blog], I had just previously tried. More surprisingly, i find this a touch more favourable than the 16yo Orcadian.Scores a C-

https://whiskylovingpianist.wordpress.com/2017/10/21/whisky-squad-149-judgement-day/

[Batch 2] October 2017

N: Rose water jam & quince jelly, fruity sweets, rose leather, wafer thin sweet light meat, soft and floral.
T: Some cardboard for sure. There’s nothing terribly wrong here except that the palate doesnt quite deliver - a little lacking in body. 
F: Rose water/quince jelly icecream-putty, dry cardboard icecream but some seriously salivating action at the end. Malty quince, a little vanilla.
C: Unique, stylistic whisky but once the wow factor had dissipated it was demoted from an initial [Rosebank-y] super-league status to something far more modest, though one table scored this at 90+. The palate let it down in the main for me, but anything that starts and finishes well can be dangerously quaffable. Hazarding a guess, i firmly ruled out Scapa. Turns out it’s a Scapa, one of their NAS range that i’d not tried before. I scored it an 84 with a collective group score of 86, another solid gold. At £32 it won a SBWM solid gold.Scores a C+

Allright and not to bad at all!