Photo credit : Whisky Speller
Been a while since i sampled a dram coming from the lovely distillery of Aberfeldy. Founded in 1896 and opened at 1898 , it’s located on the southern bank of upper Tay. The distillery closed down between 1917-1919 due to malt shortages caused by WWI, however it did operate through WWII , with only a few periods of closure, and kept its supply by reducing the age of its bottlings from 7 years to the bare minimum of 3 years. The distillery saw some expansions in 1972 and in 2000 “Dewar’s World of Whisky” was opened at the distillery (a centre for marketing the products and educating the public about the process of distillation and history of the Dewar’s brand).
Probably most of the liquid distilled there goes into the Dewar’s blends, as this is the distillery responsible for most of the whisky that goes into those blends, while some are bottled as OBs, and it’s really nice seeing one being bottled by Wemyss.
This whisky was distilled in 1994 (making it 20 years old, while bottled in 2014), and the cask produced a run of 242 bottles at the standard Wemyss strength of 46%.
Melon Vine 1994 – Wemyss Malts (Aberfeldy) , 46.0%,£97
Nose : Starts nice and sweet with spicy wood , ripe melons , peaches , wood and vanilla.
Palate: Spicy and peppery at first , than after that subsides you get the fruity sweet notes of ripe apples, peach and cantaloupe. On the second wave of sensations you get some mint and a certain winey touch in the form of quite a bit of tannins. Feels quite rich and strong for a 46% Whisky. Like!
Finish: Spicy wood. Mint. And apple peel.
A rather delicious whisky, from a distillery I don’t sample a lot of whisky from. What a nice surprise there. Good stuff, albeit at almost 100 quid, this is not a cheap whisky, certainly at the 46% abv watered down strength.
Score: 87/100
Official sample provided by Wemyss Malts