Smith's Quadrilogy : The Midnight Oil 2.122 (SMWS)

Nose: Dried and preserved fruits like figs, dates, cherries, apples, raisins, prunes, apricots, and peaches. Coffee, chocolate, roasted nuts, and marzipan drenched in sweet sherry. It resembles a trifle made with plum pudding or Christmas cake instead of sponge cake. Deep, syrupy honeyed aromas, golden syrup, treacle, and a touch of sulphur. The cask influence is very strong, but the whisky is so rich and luxurious that you can only surrender to it. A little water reveals notes of mint and menthol. Palate: An explosion of sweet fruit! Concentrated tropical fruit juice, fruit salad, honey. There's a bit of sulphur again, but it's minor and just adds depth and complexity. As it develops, notes of plums, peaches, almonds, walnuts, and plenty of sweet sherry emerge. It truly transforms into a mouthful of boozy Christmas pudding. The texture is pleasing with a substantial weight that complements the intense flavors. Finish: Medium/Long. Sweet, lingering dark fruit and sherry. This could be deemed a one-dimensional whisky due to its intense, cask-driven character, but I believe there's more to it than initially apparent. You're first hit by a barrage of aroma and flavor, seemingly all from the cask, but while the cask is clearly the dominant personality, the Glenlivet spirit provides the structure and the excellent fruit profile. Consider this a very fine spirit whose characteristics are greatly amplified by the cask, with the cask contributing an equal amount of its own character. I recently featured this at a tasting event, placing it as the third pour after the Glenlivet Illicit Still 12, which followed the core-range Glenlivet 12. In this context, there was a distinct progression from the consumer-grade whisky (colored, chill-filtered, 40% ABV, and refill-cask matured) to this cask-strength example presented in its raw form, but crucially, the characteristic aroma and flavor of Glenlivet were discernible in all three drams. This is highly enjoyable at its cask strength of 56.4% ABV, but a small splash of water opens it up nicely, and with a short rest after dilution, the profile becomes more accessible and enveloping, though it loses a bit of intensity. This makes for a wonderfully comforting evening dram. Some have noted a sulphur presence in this whisky, but I didn't find it off-putting, and it almost entirely vanishes with dilution. Sulphur is generally present in all whisky and sherry, and in my experience, a truly unpleasant sulphur taint from a faulty cask is rare, and certainly not what I encountered here. This was a limited release (as are all offerings from the Scotch Malt Whisky Society) of 598 bottles, and it would now be exceptionally difficult to find outside of auction sites. “Excellent”: 88/100 (4.5 stars)