1975 Convalmore - Gordon & MacPhail Rare Old 46%

Nose: first nose suggests OTT tannin. But a few sniffs and we begin to detect the outline of the barley. More oak, now via mild green mint tea. Graceful and confident. Taste: oh, how that took me back: a fabulous rush of barley (as in the old days0with a light honey sub-plot (also, as in the old days). The oak is attentive but not quite smothering, which allows the ulmo honey to slowly show its influence, chopped roast hazelnut adds a little further sweetness; that green tea still hops around. Finish: delightfully soft and beautifully poised: the light waves of mocha are a delicious inevitability… Balance: the rarest of the rare. And in tasting, the flavour map took me back 30 years, to when I used to buy bottles of this from Gordon and MacPhail as a 10-year-old… probably distilled around 1976. The unique personality and DNA is identical on the palate as it was then; except now of course, there is far more oak to contend with. Like finding an old lover 30 years further on: a little greyer, not quite in the same lithe shape as three decades earlier, but instantly recognisable and still very beautiful… 46%.