N: Super dark [bourbon and ex-sherry casks]. Caramel, coffee, cheeses, hazelnuts, honey and butter, homemade fruit jams - raspberries, satsumas, apples, blueberry muffins wound together, some biscuit notes, more like a complex grain, nettle tea.
T: Rich honey delivery as you'd expect, some mild pepper spice, with some light vegetal salty notes. The honey wine continues to open out with the wood, allowing all the sugars to develop. Its quite sickly sweet, but not like the AnCnoc 14, it holds itself at the brink. [the '90 Islay cask 1466 adds a fungal note here which balances the sherry fruits beautifully]. Theres a resurgence of pepper now, it wants you to know what your drinking, this isn't a snooze and slippers dram thats for sure. Then all that sickly sugar turns to a chewy toffee note - i guess we are into the finish here, amazing, its like a toffee appears in the mouth through magic.
F: After a long and lingering palate theres an impressive appearance of aniseed, grainy caramel notes with salt lingering like an old Pulteney. The death brings up a combination of sweet fried seaweed, toffee, salt and some caramel, superb. But its the fudge/toffee [Wurthers/Eclairs] which stays with you. But then theres a peppery cinnamon arrival 5 minutes later.
C: I was initially disappointed with this, having tasted so many amazing drams lately. But this is a 23yo, i hadn't given it enough time and respect. This will no doubt get better and better as i experience it further as it did as the first dram went down. Class act. After tasting the 1990 Islay cask, this 1990 2nd release is reminding me of the AnCnoc 14, lets hope this doesn't last. Its amazing how much age the Balblair can take, is it the climate, being so Northern? It can't touch the 1975!
Im getting near to the end of the bottle now and boy, how this has held up to its rivals. Ive tasted probably 20 different drams since opening this bottle, and this is right up there, so much so I'm upping this score from B+ to A-, easily deserves that. Its a tricky one because its quite prickly and isn't easy to penetrate through the pepper and sweetness, however there are rewards for those that do. Certainly could be misjudged and mis-understood from a single sample alone. Note to self - trust your instincts but be mindful of judging on first impressions alone. Less a journey dram, more a treasure hunt dram! Start looking under rocks dram.
Scores an A-