Pages

Tuesday 24 March 2020

Tomatin Decades II & 30yo Reviews

Hi everyone,

Hope everyone is staying safe and as virusless as possible.
Got some of the slightly more expensive Tomatin’s to brighten your day today! The original version of Decades is not something that I tried but I love the idea of multi-vintage vattings where the components are listed in detail with as much info as possible and this is what Tomatin have given us. So I was quite excited for Decades II when it came out recently as I’m also a fan of Tomatin in general after a great distillery tour there on my stag.

Tomatin Decades II 46%
Colour: Gold
Body: Medium
Nose: Fruity and complex with a little interesting off note. Very slightly lactic with milk bottle sweets, dusty apple, cola bottle, a bit of rubber (maybe the Sherry finished stuff? I tend to find that Sherry finished Tomatin can go a bit rubbery).
Taste: Fruity arrival, fresh with green apple, stewed pears, some melon, long development though the lactic note makes an appearance, lots of honey.
Finish: Long length. Woody honey, silky old oak, some delicate malt and a bit of rubber again.
Undoubtedly some great casks went in here (you can find the breakdown here) but ends up as a bit of a jumble. Perhaps there was also a tired cask or two. I have found that with multi-vintage vattings, sometimes less is more as the individual casks have more of a chance to stand out. Deanston did it well with their Decennary release which was only 4 casks, this was 21 in total.
74/100

Tomatin 30 46%
Colour: Gold
Body: Medium
Nose: Wonderfully tropical, fresh pineapple, orange slices, some darker malt and tobacco, white chocolate, some exotic spices hiding behind with something almost savoury- coriander. Complex.
Taste: Soft and woody start, fruity with coriander again, red and green apple, spiced pears, then darker with malt and chocolate, nice soft long development.
Finish: Medium length. Lovely balance and mouthfeel here, fading fruit, leather and tobacco.
Tried this twice before but never had the chance to make notes. A good old whisky, though lacking a bit of wow factor.
82/100

Thanks for reading!

Scotch Reviews #847-#848
Whisky Network Reviews #1019-#1020

Network Average: 75.2
Best Score: 94
Worst Score: 12
0-49 Terrible
50-59 Bad
60-64 Just About OK
65-69 Ok to Good
70-74 Good
75-79 Very Good
80-84 Excellent
85-89 Superb
90+ Magnificent

Full Disclosure Disclaimer: I currently work as the Global Brand Ambassador for Penderyn Distillery. The views expressed here are purely my own and do not reflect the views of Penderyn Distillery or The Welsh Whisky Company. I try to maintain as much objectivity as I can but feel free to take my reviews with as big a pinch of salt as you like. Furthermore, my rating scale is NOT based on a Parker type wine scoring scale or a school/college/university % or A-F grade score. You can find more on my scoring here. I apologise for any seemly low or 'bad' scores given with my system and I am sorry I can't say only nice things. Please keep in mind that I am ethically compromised and I am unable to produce 100% unbiased reviews.

No comments:

Post a Comment