Old Pulteney 15yo
Official Bottling | 46% ABV
Score: 6/10
Good stuff.
TL;DR
Balanced but polarised, a solid drinker.
The Well-Rounded One From Pulteney
Scotch whisky is a category where ageing is arguably the most important factor, but lately I find myself musing about whether Scotch might be too preoccupied with cask maturation. Do single malts rely too much on the cask at the expense of everything that goes into making the spirit in the first place?
There is indeed something special about malted barley whisky, which is why it frequently rises to the top of favourites lists among whiskies from other grains and alternate spirit types. When distilled in a pot still, the resulting liquid has a weight to it and an elegance that lends itself well to ageing in oak for a long period of time. Rye spirit is powerful and bold – it needs strong wood to compete, while corn is delicate and benefits from a light touch over many years. With barley malt, the graceful interplay between cask and spirit is in harmonious balance, neither asserting its lead in a dance that can go on for decades.
Scotch single malts by definition use only malted barley pot-distilled spirit from one distillery – a restriction that limits the allowable variation in distillate production to protect an identity. But where we have restrictions the focus shifts to other areas. Peat aside, it’s natural that for Scotch single malts, the focus area would be oak and age. Interesting and odd casks, or just a powerful sherry finish to make drinkers ooh and ahh, is the low-hanging fruit in differentiating a single malt.
“If there’s one distillery where pre-ageing details should be important, it’s Pulteney. The wash still looks like a Star Wars droid assembled from scrap parts.”
Other spirit categories are confined in other ways. Bourbon can only use new charred white oak barrels, so the natural focus then shifts to spirit production. Bourbon distilleries scramble to set themselves apart with different recipes in mash and fermentation stages – a long lost secret recipe from a distant family member perhaps? Four Roses famously uses two different grain mashbills and five different yeast strains to create 10 unique whiskeys, which are mingled (don’t say blended!) to produce one whiskey. It’s the same game with Scotch’s tactical maturation.
If there’s one distillery where pre-ageing details should be important, it’s Pulteney. The wash still looks like a Star Wars droid assembled from scrap parts. A huge reflux bubble and an amputated lyne arm, regrafted to protrude from the side of its neck. The spirit still has a smaller reflux bubble and a lyne arm that curves around in an inverted U into a drum-shaped purifier which is no longer active. Not to mention the old school worm tub condensers which are credited for creating a heavier, dirtier new make at the few distilleries that employ them.
What impact these details should have on the distillate is beyond my knowledge. Heavy? Light? Funky? Dirty? The TL;DR is that Pulteney should have a unique spirit, perhaps as crazy in character as those deranged pot stills.
Another cool feature of Pulteney that I quite enjoy is it uses energy from a wood chip fired biomass boiler system, which provides steam for the distillery processes. Once the distillery is done with the steam, the remaining hot water goes on to provide heating to homes in the surrounding community. A win for sustainability.
Review
Old Pulteney 15yo, Official Bottling (code 18/04/21) 46% ABV
£69 / CDN$130 generally available
Ok then, let’s put this beefy spirit into some refill casks for a long time and let the character of the distillate shine. Not so fast. With the double matured 15 year old, the new-make spends the first portion of its life in refill American oak ex-bourbon barrels (ok, good start) before a second maturation (don’t call it a finish!) in … first-fill Spanish oak oloroso sherry casks (f***!). A mix of rack and dunnage warehousing is used.
The 15 year old sits in the middle of the range, between the 40% ABV 12 year old, which is matured solely in ex-bourbon American oak, and the 18 year old, which is matured in Spanish oak ex-sherry casks that spend their time in dunnage.
Fans of Old Pulteney are still a little sore from the rebrand of a few years back, which resulted in a diminished age-value proposition. This is my first Old Pulteney, so lucky me – I have no experience or expectations going in aside from the standard set by my experience with other Inver House whiskies I’ve tried, which has been pretty good.
Nose
Floral, creamy sweet vanilla, honey, bergamot, salty pretzel, gingerbread, and cereal notes. Maritime character is present and overall the nose is pleasant, well-rounded, and feels about right for the age.
Palate
There’s good weight on the palate with allspice, ginger, salted caramel, butter tart, vanilla cream, and a hint of coconut. I’m a sucker for those coconut-like lactones. A slight seasoning of medicinal peatiness on the mid-palate transitions into the finish. Challenging enough to engage with but still highly drinkable.
A heavy deposit layer is left in the empty glass the next morning. Interesting that although the malt is unpeated, it still leaves a rich, thick smoky residue in the glass with wafts of sea mist.
The Dregs
I’ve heard the word “balanced” used to describe this dram. While it is indeed a balanced whisky, to me it’s a bit polarised in execution. The mental image comes to mind of a tightrope walker carrying a long pole with weights on each end. There is a balance between the spirit and cask but the different cask maturations don’t seem integrated, the components easily separated and picked apart. Not necessarily a bad thing, if a bit obvious.
Perhaps with the new range they felt a need to differentiate the 15 year old from the 12 year old with some contact time in fancier wood. While the result is pleasant, at my favourite mid-teen age for scotch, I would have liked to experience more of the distillate coming from those strange stills and worm tubs. I’ll have to try the 40% ABV 12 year old for a better sense of the spirit itself from mostly refill bourbon casks.
Overall, good stuff, a solid drinker, and I would purchase this version of Old Pulteney again, which leads me to score it as such.
Score: 6/10
Tried this? Share your thoughts in the comments below. AM
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