Bought – Morrisons, 16th October 2014
Ratings:
85.5/100 – Whisky Bible 2015
81/100 – Mark Dermul, YouTube Review (May 2014)
Recently I posted about the new Ardmore Legacy replacing the (arguably) better Traditional Cask. We now have the Auchentoshan ‘American Oak’ replacing the ‘Classic’. Thankfully it would seem Auchentoshan have got it right and this new release is an improvement on the old Classic. To be fair, it wouldn’t take much. The Classic wasn’t bad, just not exactly good either. A score in the 70s out of 100 was all it was worth.
Jim Murray in his Whisky Bible 2015 doesn’t have much to say about the American Oak but 85.5/100 classifies it as “very good to excellent whisky definitely worth buying”. He summaries with “quite creamy with some toasted honeycomb making a cameo appearance”.
It wouldn’t be right to discuss Auchentoshan without mentioning the Toshman, Mark Dermul. If anyone knows Auchentoshan it’s Mark, so I watched his YouTube review with interest. He agrees with Mr Murray that the American Oak is an improvement on the Classic. I got Mark’s rating of 81/100 from Whiskybase where the average score to date is 73.2/100 from 7 reviews. Not exactly great. Perhaps Auchentoshan is more of an acquired taste, being one of the rare Lowland spirits.
Whisky Den 