Aultmore 12yo
Official Bottling | 46% ABV
Score: 5/10
Average. In a good way.
TL;DR
Mild, sweet and clean — one to sip whilst daydreaming
Aultmore of the Foggie Moss: Evocative.
Spoiler: Google says otherwise.
Dusting off the cardboard tube, for it has been in storage for a while, I am pleased to see over half the bottle remains of this “Aultmore of the Foggie Moss.” Inside the tube rests the receipt, too, from Royal Mile Whiskies in Edinburgh. Below the date — 13th August 2021 — is the price I paid for this: £47.95.
I remember the day vividly, for it was my first jaunt post-Covid lockdown and a glorious sunny day in the capital. I’d spent the afternoon with my uncle (of recent sailing fame) and, after a good stint in the Bow Bar, where I’d tried Daftmill for the first time, I’d walked up to RMW for a look about. It was the first time I’d stepped foot in a whisky shop proper, and I was nervous about it. However, after looking briefly around the place and having a chat with the lady there, she revealed, from the bottom shelf behind a stack of other tubes, this bottle of Aultmore 12. The brief I’d given her was “something that isn’t usually chosen”.
On the electric bus ride back to my town 20 miles north of the city, I was in a super mood, made even better when I opened my front door and smelled freshly made pizza — joy of joys. After a fine pizza dinner, I got stuck into the Aultmore and found it to be sweet, light and fruity — “more delicate than the other Speyside drams I’ve tried recently”, I scribbled into my wee notebook that I kept at that time. I also wrote below it, “Needs more time — will come back to it in a few months.”
“What does a year do to a palate that was fairly green back then? Will I find more notes other than ‘fresh, fruity and sweet’?”
Those few months turned into a year, because my acquisition phase was soon in full swing: bottles were flying in left, right and centre, I was opening them all with reckless abandon, and my wife was slowly accepting that this was how it was going to be for a while. I’ve got a bit of an addictive personality — not in the way that people can’t stop enjoying my fabulous bants, but in the way that when I find something enjoyable, I instantly ramp up the involvement to the maximum possible level. Whisky had a genuinely ground-moving effect on me, and so my involvement ramped accordingly.
During those intervening months, I’ve exposed my palate to loads of different whisky, increasing my ability to smell and taste quite significantly since that halcyon day in August 2021. Tonight, after another stressful day at the office, I was thinking about whisky and what I’d drink if I weren’t continuing my dry week/saturated weekend ritual. My mind suddenly manifested a vision of the photograph that I’d snapped on the evening I’d returned from the city, with the sunset glancing off the Aultmore bottle and making for a quite dramatic image.
The thought of whisky and its mind-healing properties was too much to ignore… After the wee red-haired bullet was in her bed, I popped into the garage and dug out, from where it had rested for over a year, the Aultmore tube. What does a year do to a palate that was fairly green back then? Will I find more notes other than “fresh, fruity and sweet”?
Review
Aultmore 12yo official bottling, NCF, natural colour, 46% ABV
£48 and still generally available
I really like the presentation of the Aultmore 12: it’s bright, clean and sharp. The tube features a nice foggy scene of what I assume is the distillery standing beside a wetlands — or a coastal front. A brief paragraph on why it’s called “Aultmore of the Foggie Moss” sits above this scene and the language is evocative of fishermen enjoying a well-earned dram after a hard day fighting through the fog to catch their fish.
The distillery, it turns out (via Google), sits behind a bank of houses just north of Keith in Moray, and about 8 miles south of the coast of the Moray Firth. A bit disappointing! A big stink is also made on the label of how smooth this whisky is. Clean and smooth. Smooth. Clean.
Nose
It is indeed very clean, mild sweetness and the merest hint of hay initially. A lot of nose-digging finds some light rye bread, yeast and malt. There’s an ever-present edge of sharpness, like a spritz of lemon or lime — very light-touch. A juicy toffee apple, with the watery apple juice swamping the toffee. A wee bit of grass, a wee bit of fresh fields.
Palate
Light, fresh, sweet. Mild toffee notes, a bit of warming heat and some nuts appear, and a slight malty flavour pops its head around the door. A little wave of vanilla followed by a sharper, fresh natural yoghurt — or a funky sourdough. Pleasant, but there’s nothing shouting for attention.
The Dregs
So a year on, the Aultmore 12 remains very similar to how I left it: delicate, light and sweet. It’s not aggressive, and it’s not bold. It’s a great sipping dram to whittle away the evening hours on a fading summer-season sunset, a whisky that demands nothing of your attention.
What to say about it, then? Well, a few things. First is that a year has passed in between me drinking half of this bottle and now, and in that time, the whisky hasn’t changed all that much. I’ve had half-way bottles open up in less time to reveal more flavour, but this one has just remained as it was — perhaps it’s the adjusted 46%-levelled nature of the whisky, or perhaps it’s just a really stable malt. Given Aultmore’s desire to overstate the smoothness and cleanliness of this whisky, I can’t imagine they’d want it to suddenly take on an edginess after sitting for a while, so it makes sense.
The price of this whisky has remained the same since I bought it. This is either a good sign of the market stabilising or an indication of how popular (or not) this whisky is, I’m not sure. When I’m drinking this, I’m also thinking of the Lismore 18yo, a Master of Malt special brand that I bought around the same time. It too was fairly inert and peanutty, and cost me just £38! For an 18-year-old malt!
I’m also reminded, seeing that receipt and thinking back to last year, of how far I’ve come in a year, personally and professionally. It’s been a quick skip over 12 months of life experiences and I want to shout at life to slow down. Back in August 2021, Covid rules were still firmly in place, and it was an unsettling environment of weirdness and disquiet. Fast forward to now, and not only do we still have that Corona weirdness looming in the background, but we also have many other pressures mounting, especially leading into the cold season. How little has changed, in retrospect. How far we have yet to go.
This whisky is a nice whisky. It’s not going to set your palate on fire and it’s not going to fight for your attention, but it’ll sit just fine alongside some well-needed rumination and belt-loosening of the brain trousers.
Score: 5/10
Tried this? Share your thoughts in the comments below. DC
-
Dramface is free.
Its fierce independence and community-focused content is funded by that same community. We don’t do ads, sponsorships or paid-for content. If you like what we do you can support us by becoming a Dramface member for the price of a magazine.
However, if you’ve found a particular article valuable, you also have the option to make a direct donation to the writer, here: buy me a dram - you’d make their day. Thank you.
For more on Dramface and our funding read our about page here.
