Floki Young Malt Review

Hi everyone,

Iceland is a beautiful place. Stunning landscape, and a great place for adventure, whale watching and the northern lights.

But perhaps not the best place for making whisky.

To be fair to this, it isn’t whisky. Not yet. This is an under matured malt spirit, that has been aged for around 1 year I think, in virgin oak. It’s also made with local barley and from a single cask.

The idea of my rating system was always to use the whole scale but I really never thought I’d be using the proper bottom end of the scale. The only two I’ve scored below 40 haven’t really been whiskies. This is one of those.

Photo Courtesy of Master of Malt

Floki Young Malt 47%

Colour: Dark Gold

Body: Medium

Nose: A horrible mix of off notes. Horribly rubbery, awfully yeasty, a rotting sweetness. Really weird.

Taste: The texture maybe is the most off-putting thing, this burnt plastic and rubbery mouthfeel. Yeasty, sharp and weird.

Finish: Medium length. Maybe the worst bit, makes you gag and want to spit it out.

The worst thing I've put in my mouth in a long time. I would seriously recommend avoiding this, especially at the price you’d pay in the Icelandic duty free for the 50cl bottles.

12/100

Thanks for reading!

Network Average: 74.7

Best Score: 93

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 a 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.

Why is this here?

3 Pale Ones: Braevil, Allt-a-Bhainne & Aultmore Reviews

Hello again everyone,

Still on the explore to taste whiskies from all the distilleries in Scotland I bought some samples of Master of Malt's own bottlings, because they are always a little bit cheaper than other samples.

So I've got 3 today, all very pale, probably young whiskies from distilleries I've never tried.

First up Braevil or Braes of Glenlivet.

Braes o' Glenlivet That Boutique-y Whisky Company Batch 1 47.2%

Colour: Light Gold

Body: Medium

Nose: Immediately intensely floral. Bath bombs, lavender, daffodils, pollen, dried flowers, washing powder, clean clothes, vanilla pods, dry grass, dry oak.

Water: Milk chocolate.

Taste: Intense. Sweet and floral. Juicy to start. Quite dry too, becoming even more dry with classic pear and green apple, some prickling oak building.

Water: Softer and more drying.

Finish: Medium length. A little prickling oak and sour under ripe pear.

Notes: A more floral Bladnoch, quite Lowland.

71/100

Definitely the best of these three although not exactly amazing. Almost quite soapy at points.

Allt-A-Bhainne That Boutique-y Whisky Company Batch 1 49.2%

Colour: Straw

Body: Medium

Nose: Gin. How is this NOT Gin?! Aromatic botanicals, juniper berries, dried orange peel, dried lemon peel, cucumber, tonic, orris root, angelica root, liquorice root.

Water: More gin. Was this in a gin barrel??

Taste: Gin. Aromatic botanicals, all the above, some oak, vanilla, some burnt toffee. Building dry oak.

Water: Softer. More juniper berry.

Finish: Medium/Long length. Dark chocolate and mocha, but a bit of unpleasant bitter tannin.

Notes: Pretty sure Master of Malt sent me a gin sample by accident... Shame I don't like Gin!

66/100

Gin is the Bhainne of my life! Eh? Eh? Oh forget it!

Aultmore 5yo Master of Malt Single Cask 65.4%

Colour: Pale straw

Body: Medium

Nose: Very light. The high alcohol doesn't feel much. Toffee, fudge, some milk chocolate.

Water: More alcohol. More water: Lemon.

Taste: Intense. Alcohol, toffee, fudge, vanilla, some milk chocolate, some herbal, green tea, then a little oak and more chocolate into the finish.

Water: Softer but also intense. Intense toffee and fudge, vanilla, white grape.

Finish: Short length. Lots of milk chocolate.

Notes: Young and intense but lacking any sort of complexity.

67/100

Proves that high Abv does not mean high intensity or lots of flavour.

Reviews #68-#70

Network Average: 78.3

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