Dalmore 12 Year Scotch Review
This may come as a shock to some of you but I’ve never had a Dalmore product prior to purchasing this bottle. I’ve been to several festivals and tastings where Dalmore was offered but just never made it a priority. One such event stuck out where this asshole in a fedora stood at the booth boasting about his trip to Scotland where he made love to the hole in a whisky barrel while he dined on ox tails and sourdough bread.
I’ve seen some extremely high dollar Dalmore products on the market and rather that start with their 62 year $160,000 offering I decided it would be more quaint to hit up this 12 year. One of the things you’ll notice about the Dalmore products is the signature stag symbol on the front - I think their bottles are really cool and something that looks awesome in any bar. Fun fact, the stag symbol is based on the Mackenzie clan crest from some bullshit story back in the 13th century. Look it up.
The Dalmore distillery sits in the highlands and IF YOU WATCHED MY BRIEF INTRODUCTION TO SCOTCH VIDEO you’ll know that…well…there is a wide variety of flavors with these scotches because of the size of the region. However, highland scotches tend to be more full bodied and less smokey so you don’t feel like you’re in a Florida Waffle House.
I was excited to try it because I enjoy finding a new brand of scotch to sink my hard earned money into. The overall aroma was a signature scotch scent but I got intense vanilla and what seemed like cigar smoke. On the palate I got dark chocolate, cinnamon and orange with some smoke that built as the finish went on. So if we’re talking a peaty/smoke scale where 0 is a coca-cola and 100 is the mouth of Sean Penn this is around a 35. I very much enjoyed the overall flavor and I’ll definitely be sipping on this one pretty regularly.
If you are new to the scotch game then I would start with either the Macallan 10/12 or the Balvenie 12 Doublewood and work your way into this one as your 2nd or 3rd bottle. This would be a nice introduction to some of the smokey scotches you have from da islands mahn. Additionally, the $65 tag doesn’t seem to excite my loins when I know there are things I enjoy more in the less than that category. However, if you’re a stubborn asshole with a fedora you won’t go wrong picking this up.