Tomatin Cask Strength
Distillery Release | 57.5% ABV
Score: 7/10
Very Good Indeed.
TL;DR
A very enjoyable, changeable whisky that offers loads to explore.
The Eater of Dreams releases its suffocating grip… for a second.
My oldest friend suffers viciously from Crohn's Disease, a horrible affliction that renders your insides a raging hot mess of abject misery, and your outsides a raging hot mess in other ways.
I’ve watched him brave-face through tortuous bouts of digestive distress and power through overwhelming pain, only to dice with death under knife and stitch, steroids and immunosuppressants keeping him barely sane. Thus it was decreed that, in lieu of the 70-mile course we’d intended to tackle in the local cycling sportive, we would instead aim for the 50 miler instead.
He’s spent most of our lives being the irritatingly fit guy, always able to be a yard or two ahead at any point, whether cycling on road or off, or football on grass pitch or astroturf; his smaller frame, coupled with better stamina and energy far outstrips my hulking mass. Now and then he’s turbo charged with anti-inflammatory steroids, making him almost frenetic in pace and cadence.
I once muttered, at my most vulnerable halfway up a steep incline, that I wished I had those drugs in my system. The reply that it’s great, so long as you can endure the midnight sweats, racing heart rate, searing flare-ups and inability to sit still for hours on end, was enough to get me up the hill thankful I had no steroidal input to contend with. After we hit mile 30 of our sportive and without those fidget pills coursing through his system, the wall of pain duly arrived when the headwind picked up and the gradient increased. His body made it to the end, but his soul did not.
Afterwards we refuelled with welcome hot pasta and coffee before heading home, with promises to head out again for a cycle the following week and the last 100ml of Scapa 12yo Distillery Exclusive under his arm for recovery. I felt quite good afterwards - I’ve been training hard enough that I was ready for the 70-mile course and stopping after 50 left quite a bit in my tank. It was how I felt able to accompany my wife and daughter to Perth within an hour of finishing. Adelphi had just released their new Maclean’s Nose blended whisky and I’d intended to order one online, but my focus had been on preparing for the cycle and not purchasing whisky, so my hope was to nip over to Malts and Spirits Co, and see if they had any.
Mrs Crystal parted for the hairdressers/therapists session and mini-Crystal and I headed first for the gem shop (she loves collecting gemstones and knows all their names) and then the bookshop (daddy loves looking at but never actually buying books - the curse of Kindle). Wife suitably trimmed and decompressed I departed to the theatre of dreams on George Street.
I usually open the door to this wee whisky parlour and find Steve sitting behind the desk, but today it was someone else and the shelves behind her had noticeably expanded in capacity since my last visit - business has been good for Malts and Spirits and I’m chuffed to bits to see it. I was here for the Maclean, I said, but perhaps something else too. Quickly we made our way through the likes and like nots, narrowing it down to a choice of Tamdhu or Tomatin. It’s interesting how Tamdhu has gone from appearing to be absurdly expensive for what it is, to being in line with the general lay of whisky right now, something that needed pointing out to me when I said: “Tamdhu is overpriced, no?”
I mean, some whisky is quite ridiculously expensive: £80 for a 5 year old Nc’nean? £110 for 5 year old Ryelaw from Inchdairnie? What about £130 for 18 year old Aberlour at 43%, chill-filtered and coloured? Quite hard to justify spending that amount on stuff that’s ultimately decanted down the drain and might not deliver a comparative smell and taste experience. It’s why Maclean’s Nose, at £32 here and £29 other places, is so exciting - 46%, non chill-filtered and natural colour? Anyway, I digress.
A few other customers entered the shop and I was left to think about what my second bottle would be. Funnily enough we’d just recently had a chat on our Dramface writer’s group about what Tomatin bottle was good to pitch for, and the answer was either the 14 year old Port Wood Finish, or the NAS Cask Strength. By the time I’d searched for this message stream in the chat, the other customers had departed with goods in hand, and I declared that my decision was the 14 year old Porty. Excellent choice, and one of her favourite drams. I then asked if the Cask Strength was, in comparison, more interesting? Yes, was the answer - if you want to explore and play, the CS is the one. If you want a steady banger that you can sit with, the 14 is the one.
My decision was reversed on account of fiddle potential and the Cask Strength was popped in the bag alongside the Maclean’s Nose. I was excited to get home and open both up, to see what this new ultra-blend was saying, and what cask strength Tomatin, prepared by the OG, smells and tastes like.
Review
Tomatin Cask Strength, Official Bottling, 57.5% ABV
£55 paid
Once upon a time 23 stills produced a theoretical 12 million litres of alcohol per annum and was the largest distillery in Scotland. For a distillery that’s rarely mentioned in general chit-chat, that’s mind blowing. Tomatin distillery is more than 130 years old and according to some fellow Dramfacers, producing highlight-of-year drams (albeit under their even lesser known Cù Bòcan label).
Well, how come I’ve never heard anyone recommend Tomatin except when under duress? Someone recently posted on social media a very old bottle of Tomatin and said it was fantastic and lovely and super wonderful but… they’d stopped buying it and would proffer their reasons over a dram one day. A bit of a tease there, but I managed to glean that it was a sour brand experience and rising prices. Are Tomatin going the way of Glengoyne? I don’t think so.
Tomatin. The eater of dreams. The last time I bought a Tomatin it turned into a nightmare, literally. Since then I’ve sort of avoided it, not because I’m scared, but because Tomatin is just never on my radar. I don’t know why - the bottles are beautifully presented with almost transparent labelling, featuring an elegant bottle profile and reasonable pricing. So why then is this the first official bottling I’ve procured, and what does it all mean? Why isn’t this whisky, declared on said bottle to be the “softer side of the Highlands” not spoken of more? In the almost 2.43 years since I started drinking whisky I’ve never been recommended Tomatin until today in the shop.
A blend of ex-bourbon and ex-oloroso sherry casks, this is the only core range NAS cask strength whisky Tomatin offers, and is presented at a robust 57.5% ABV. Non chill-filtered and natural colour too, although only clarified on box, not bottle. That said, now I’ve read those words, I know it to be true - I don’t need reminding each time I look at the bottle and even if I did forget, typing it into the interwebs produces the same answer within 0.25 seconds.
It is odd though, not to put little writing on the bottle to celebrate this enthusiast's presentation, even if just to make sure Ralfy is happy. Such is life.
Nose
Cherry and raisin tiffin - Maltesers in there too. Horlicks. Red wine, tannic. Digestive biscuits, apple sours. Very malty. Cola, red fruits and big oaky sweetness coming through after a bit of time. Soft-scoop vanilla ice cream. Honey-roasted cashews mixed with the black pepper and sea salt ones. Creamy cedar.
Palate
Straw, hay and very spicy. Becoming biscuity. Caramel shortcake, berries, pickles. Woody and savoury - not salty, just biscuity, buttery, grainy. The flavour and heat of a ginger snap biscuit - old style tooth breaker. Very tart apples - like a Garibaldi, buttery and sugary but with a cutting apple tart edge. Fleeting farm. Brand new plastic petrol can - HDPE - on the finish. Drop of water: nice pop of a jammy note. Develops into a nice chocolate note with wee pips of dried strawberry on top.
The Dregs
Tomatin for me is an interesting whisky, because throughout the sweetness a very clear savoury tartness pervades. In the Cadenhead’s Warehouse Nightmare, it was tomatoes. In this bottling it’s pickles. It’s the sour/salty thing that many speak of, and definitely adds another colour in the spectrum of flavour to explore. Whisky can often be one dimensional, or follow a specific note train and not offer much else (like the Infrequent Flyers Glenrothes, for example), but with this whisky there’s interesting things popping up left and right.
The first few pours until the shoulder seems very good, if a little bit uniform. Front loaded, perhaps. Loads of flavour and excitement in the first few seconds, then dissipating to nothing shortly thereafter. Watering it down only tempers this immediate explosion of flavour, creating an even more uniformly unexceptional performance. Does a bit more distance, time and patience make the heart grow fonder?
Thankfully yes it does. Well past the shoulder and I’m getting some really nice biscuity things appearing, dried raisins embedded in sugary shortbread. I guess it’s that savoury thing rearing its head again - buttery biscuits. Salty toffee. The further it goes down, the more it reveals until tonight, when I’m getting magnificent bursts of jammy toast, luxurious ribbons of milk chocolate, maybe a little bit of caramel in there, but with a really nice contrasting tart pip of dried strawberries on top.
Being uniformly lovely is a great asset in whisky, if that whisky resonates with your palate. If it doesn’t, then it can be translated as boring or one dimensional, and that’s unfair. Just because it doesn’t land with one palate, doesn’t mean it’s not magnificent with another, but short of stealing palates and grafting them onto mine, there’s not a lot I can do to circumvent this limitation of the human condition. A changeable dram, one that swings around the place and gives you swathes of differing experiences each time you try it, are whiskies that get my motor going and almost offer something for everyone at the same time. It’s a constant exploration, an unknown each time of what might appear and I love it. This Tomatin falls firmly into the changeable whisky, and brings to mind the Benromach Abbey Whisky that captured my heart.
£55 for a NAS is significant if that NAS is Aberlour Triple Cask. Scunnered from the lack of anything to be found, paying that price is tantamount to daylight robbery and even now thinking about it, I’m incensed. £55 for a NAS that presents like this Tomatin Cask Strength, however, is fantastic value - at online prices of £46 it’s even better. No two NAS whiskies are made the same, and it’s the minefield of choice that we have to navigate carefully if we are to keep ourselves from blowing up. Much like blended whisky, NAS whiskies are quickly becoming accepted as the go to zones for primo quality whiskies that don’t command the world, and the more of these NAS whiskies like Tomatin Cask Strength I find and love, the more I’m convinced that the bias towards having numbers on labels as a measure of quality, is silly. I’m here for any whisky that leaves me swooning, blended, NAS, grain or aged.
The question now is, do I start chipping away at the glittering Tomatin nuggets embedded in the rockface, or do I find another seam?
Score: 7/10
Tried this? Share your thoughts in the comments below. DC
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