The Arran Single Sherry Cask 1996 CS for SF’s The Whisky Shop (30 ml cable car line tolerator bottle)

Tasting notes:
     The fruit on the nose of this dram is wild, and not really what you’d expect from a sherry cask: nectary sweet on the nose, much like mango nectar passed through a Cupid fountain.  But really, it’s wilder and more refined than that: it’s more like barium-inflected mango nectar from the Carrara marble colonoscopy fountain that the Medicis commissioned Leonardo da Vinci to create after he explained to them how he’d secretively explored the large intestines of a cadaver in order to better understand the anatomy of the human abdomen, only to have the Medicis order it destroyed moments after Leonardo had presented it to them (at least they had the good manners to wait until he’d left the villa).  If that image seems disgusting, please consider the fact that it was made from the finest Italian marble (and we swear a hint of the minerals come through on the nose).  Allow it to open up, and it morphs beautifully into a lemon banana hybrid, more banemon than lenana. On the mouth, the fruit comes through, but it’s more concentrated than on the nose, and there’s a hint of oak as well:  Dutch wooden shoes undergoing a spit shine by a guy eating tropical fruit, or perhaps kiwis used to create soft-soled shoes for a dik-dik–you know, for a night out on the town.  The mouth seeps into the finish, bringing lingering notes of ruby red grapefruit buttered and sautéed whole–not sliced–in an iron skillet.  The grapefruit just roll and roll around and around in a most mesmerizing way.  In fact, it was so mesmerizing for me, I lost myself for a while, only to wake up to find that I’d sucked my Glencairn glass dry while I was out.

Our thanks to Sam Filmus and ImpEx for the sample!