Mossburn 12yo Foursquare Rum Cask
Blended Malt Rum Cask Finish | 57.7% ABV
Score: 6/10
Good Stuff.
TL;DR
Hot, fiery and requiring a bit of patience to extract the best from this rather nice Speyside blend.
Don’t Let Them In
“Someone's in the house!” Mrs Crystal whispered as I quickly ripped my headphones from my lugs, which I’m forced to wear now that we work from the same room in our house. I’m forever getting ‘telt aff’ for not hearing what she’s saying to me when a request is muttered from another room, but when ‘at work’, Mrs Crystal’s volume is akin to standing next to the Neist Point Foghorn amidst a pea souper. Thus attenuation is sorely required - sometimes I don’t even have music playing, I just need the decibel reduction.
The quite generous act of someone opening your door, placing an item you’ve requested onto a worktop and closing the door. You wouldn’t think it could be so dramatic, but when you’ve moved from the lowlands where, if such a thing occurred you’d be reaching for the nearest blunt weapon in defence, it’s a wee bit surprising. We’ve been used to our home being our safe sanctuary from the horrible world outside and locking doors is just second nature now - especially after the spate of break-ins around our old abode. Yet the first time it happened on the island we were shook.
It’s just what’s done here. Posties and couriers don’t have the time to knock, wait and chat. Every house is 500 yards away on a branch, and 8 miles away on the trunk roads, so time is literally of the essence. If the posties here did what posties do in the lowlands, they’d get 10 parcels delivered every day. So they horse up the drive at fair lick, leap out their van and stick whatever it is they’re delivering in the kitchen and whizz off to the next house, without stopping to check if you’re even in or not. It’s how it used to be done back in the day, and the fact that we’re so surprised is more an indictment of the modern world than it is of the postie; they’re just operating on a long lost human condition known as trust.
We hoped, when we moved to the Misty Isle, that community would be a big part of daily life and, I think I speak for all of us in the Crystal Castle, our expectations have been blown out of the water. We lived in our old house for six years and only on the day of our departure to the island did we finally speak to one of our more reclusive neighbours, also six years present, for the first time proper. Within a day of arriving here we had people knocking at our door introducing themselves and inviting us to their place for tea, whisky, wine and stories. Great stories filled with fascinating island history, which lights all of Doog’s fires. Community and knowing your neighbours is everything. Being on first name terms with posties, shop owners, mechanics and fuel truck drivers is essential to being a Sgiathanach.
One fine sunny November day Mrs Crystal left to make a cup of tea, and returned carrying a giant box that had appeared in our kitchen unannounced, one that could easily hold a 1984 Mark V Mini Cooper wheel even with a packet of Haribo lurking in the shadows. By the way, a wee departure for a second - I used to get deliveries from Wiggle, that cheap as chips bike place that used to include a small packet of Haribo in every delivery, whether it be a tube of hydrating water tablets or a new cycling top that made you resemble a poly bag full of potatoes. I’d stuff the wee packet in the cupboard and condemn them to be eaten in moments of utmost desperation. Now that Wiggle are unfortunately in liquidation, the creditors are listed publicly - Haribo are due £20,000. Or ~200,000 packets of Haribo…all stuffed into cupboards the country over.
Anyway - the box was unmarked. Nothing on it at all except a hand-written address. How did it get here? I opened it tentatively and inside one of the eight cells that accepts bottles, was a single whisky tube. Sliding it out I was mystified by what I found - a bottle of Mossburn Speyside Blended Whisky.
Mrs Crystal’s eyes began their slow, withering eye-roll ceremony but I protested - I have not purchased this. The questions began - who sent it? If someone did send it, why isn’t there an address label with barcode or stamp or something showing a fee on the box? Who has our new address? Why would they send this exact bottle? What even is this bottle? Has one of the Dramface squad sent it to me? I haven’t given them my address yet, apart from…Wally.
A quick message to Wally to ask, and all became clear. A while back, early November, the team was asked if any of us would like to review a bottle of Torabhaig Allt Gleann Batch Strength. With no immediate response from the team I thought, given I’m on the same island and planning a trip down to the distillery this year, that I would quite like to see what it’s all about, so put my hand up. Weeks later an email arrived asking for addresses and then that was that. Somewhere along the line, either through mistake or through purpose, the bottle became a Mossburn bottle. I didn’t know that Mossburn Distillers own Torabhaig Distillery, and so very quickly after explaining my situation did Wally put the pieces together. Turns out that the bottle was sent from Torabhaig Distillery and handed to a courier, without any paperwork or labels, and the courier dropped it off with other parcels on his way around his route. Service with a smile.
Long story short (he says), Mossburn had made a boo-boo and send the wrong bottle but, if I wanted to, could review this instead of the Torabhaig. Reluctant at first, I though a bit about this bottle now that I knew where it had come from and, realising that I was just about to submit the Ardnamurchan Rum Cask Release review, thought it quite serendipitous that another rum cask bottling should appear at that very moment I was in ‘rum mode’. So I said yes.
Review
Mossburn 12yo, Foursquare Rum Cask Finish, Blended Malt, Speyside ‘Cask Collaboration Series’, ‘Over’ 12 years old blended malt, finished in ex-oak Foursquare rum casks, 57.7% ABV
£65 widely available
Speyside isn’t my go-to region for whatever reason. Highland is my gravitational pull, but given I’ve been more and more impressed by blends of late it’s another pushpin on the big cork board of experience, if nothing else.
Mossburn isn't an independent bottler that I’ve had any experience with either, although I’ve seen a lot of their bottlings around. This is a blended malt, so I’m assuming that Mossburn have taken parcels of single malts, aged ‘over 12 years’ from different Speyside distilleries and brought them together to form this blend, before finishing the vatting in ex-Foursquare rum casks. There’s no mention of batch numbers on their website (Torabhaig) or indeed what different whiskies went into the blend. But it does mention that this is the first in their annual ‘Cask Collaboration’ series.
Very good then. I check the website for pricing and see it’s £65. That’s not at all bad really, for a minimum 12 year old, 57.7% ABV uncoloured and unfiltered whisky, stated on the rear label of both bottle and tube. An exciting foundation for what could be a nice wee surprise whisky. I’m always so excited when I open new things in case it’s a sleeper hit…
Score: 6/10
Good Stuff.
TL;DR
Hot, fiery and requiring a bit of patience to extract the best from this rather nice Speyside blend.
Nose
PVA glue. Feels very grain-like. It’s quite hot and feisty at batch strength, stinging the nostrils somewhat. Big bananas lurk behind it - synthetic and over-ripe. Toffee sweetness, sugar syrup. It’s presenting as golden hues - mid-orange erring over to canary yellow.
Water opens it up to a sugary, savoury malted cereal fest. Cream crackers. Boiled sweets. Cedar. Raisiny choc. Vegetal - leafy. Foamy bananas. Soil. Big permanent marker. Balloon.
Palate
Viciously hot. Burny, potent. Very sugary sweet with a raw citrus/tart edge. Too much.
Takes a lot of water to get it down under scalding. Eventually it’s all fudgey with a chilli kick. Sweet caramelised pear, maybe even pineapple like their official tasting notes state. It’s got an endearing leafy, dark sugary thing going on in the background. It has vanilla pods, some frangipane and buttery short crust happening. A dusting of icing sugar. Then the leaf kicks in again - the rum is a bit more…conventional rummy here than the Ardnamurchan.
The Dregs
Well, I quite like this bottling. It’s a cascading firefall of ripping hot mess at batch strength, but with a bit of diligent water guidance and a smattering of patience, it comes into play eventually and resolves as a good whisky that doesn’t rely overtly on the rum part of the makeup. It’s a nice balance between the Speyside character, vanilla and green fruit toffee, and the dark sugary rum thing that I expected when I opened the Ardnamurchan Rum Cask Release. The leafy element, apparently a big character of some rums, is in there and doesn’t seem to mute anything , but compliments the rest.
I took it down to the Lowlands late November on a trip to see the fam and shared it with my old man, a whisky drinker of now rare indulgence aligned more with 40% Aberlours and Glenlivets when he does have a dram. This 57.7% ripper didn’t hit the mark for him, not because it was wildly hot, but because it was just ‘ok’. When I mentioned the price he baulked. £65 is not money well spent, he said, for what this whisky delivers.
I’m not sure I totally agree, not just because spending £65 on whisky for Dad is a big event anyway. It did take me a long time to come to a conclusion about it though - the whole bottle almost, save some samples to the team and the old man’s opinion. Now that I’m one or two from an empty bottle I think I can surmise that it’s a good whisky, if you’re willing to spend the time required to manipulate it into something that opens it up for investigation. £65 is not an entry-level price, but when I think of the bottles that I’ve bought since - the Maker’s Mark NAS at £28, the Ardnamurchan NAS Rum Cask Release at £75, the Fragrant Drops 29yo North British at £95, three auction bottles priced around £50 (2x SMWS and 1x Red Cask Co all under 9yo), and finally the Glencadam NAS Tawny at £48, it’s not vastly outside the acceptable realms of fair pricing for an age stated, cask strength, natural whisky that gives a good amount of interest.
Am I considering picking up another? I’m not. The 12yo Speyside Blended Malt finished in Foursquare Rum Casks ticks the boxes for exciters, but the searing heat, fiddly nature and overall general ‘niceness’ doesn’t prompt me to sing about it or reach back any time I fancy a dram like I might the Glencadam,for example. The £65 I could spend on it will instead be put towards buying a bottle of the Torabhaig Allt Gleann Batch Strength that I really fancied trying in the first place.
Score: 6/10
Bottle supplied by Mossburn Distillers without obligation.
Tried this? Share your thoughts in the comments below. DC
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