The Mortlach 14 Year Old “Alexander’s Way” Travel Retail Exclusive
700 ml destined for greatness bottle
Tasting notes:
The nose on this travel retail exclusive is simply joyous. But that may just be because it smells so very Mortlach. For those of you who don’t exactly know that particular smell, think butter browning, with pecans added for good measure, then lovingly ladled onto the cleanest of clean laundry hung to dry on a clothesline in Dorne.
The mouth is tremendous. Pure Dufftown magic. It’s savory, but it’s also a perfect crust, without coming off as upper crust. It makes me want to be a better person. But there’s also a red wine note running into a Cognac note, and then both of them tripping over one another as they fall onto a Persian rug. There are also hints of mild green pepper, or maybe it’s a poblano pepper after it’s received a hot stone massage. This is a bespoke mouthwash provided in each room at John Wick’s hotel, the Continental. It is also ridiculously drinkable–much more drinkable than the previous note there suggests.
And the finish is everything you want a finish to be: a layer of scintillating spice that hovers above your tongue without touching it or hurting it, like a dominatrix building suspense. In musical terms, the finish is a diminuendo. Actually, it’s a pre-minuendo: it goes through a series of tonal shifts. It’s downright Bartokian. It is one damn fine drink.
Rating:
On the scale of noteworthy middle children–
The Mortlach 14 Year Old “Alexander’s Way” is Grace Kelly–The second youngest of four (just like this Mortlach, with the 12, 16, and 20 Year Olds making up the rest of the regular retail range), Grace Patricia Kelly went on to outshine her siblings. That could very well happen here, too.
—Stephen
Leave a comment