Springbank 10 Local Barley (2022)

I feel like my reviews are becoming generic lately. The issue is... I feel like whiskies are all starting to hit the same notes. This one won't change that. Nose - If you could combine fresh-cut hay, barley, and lemons aged on oak, you'd capture about 80% of this nose. Add a sprinkle of sea salt and hints of smoke, and you've got it. Okay, some crystallized sugar, rich vanilla, and yes, those familiar Springbank sugar cookies. I appreciate the simplicity and complexity here. It's as straightforward as my notes suggest, yet it's incredibly rich and layered. Taste - Let's start with the drawbacks. The finish reminds me of a Hazelburn single cask 10-year that cost half as much. It's less sweet and more sour/bitter than the batch 23 Springbank 12 (also ex-bourbon). The ABV is too low, and it's not as creamy as it could be. The positives. The barley and earthy notes work perfectly with the light peat and salty notes. The finish is explosive, rich, and lingers for a long time. You know what, let's compare it to the Hazelburn. Okay, they're not comparable, haha. It's amazing how memory can recall the notes you enjoy in a bottle like this Hazelburn, but when you actually compare them, they don't align. Hazelburn is buttery and creamy sweet, while this Springbank is earthy, bitter, salty, peaty, and downright HARSH. Both have amazing finishes, but the Springbank is much more earthy (in a good way) and more bitter. The Hazelburn, by comparison, is a caramel bomb with a sudden sour note. Oh, the more I try the Hazelburn, the more sourness emerges, but again, in a great way. But it's different from this. So, what Springbank did after what I considered a failure for the local barley brand last year was return to the absolute basics. They took a very earthy and fundamental concept of local barley and simply presented it: here's our raw, in-your-face, tired cask bourbon expression. And I have to say, the more I compare it to other whiskies, the more impressed I become. This isn't a whisky that's amazing on the nose. It's not about discovering 10,000 flavors. It's about the mouthfeel, the experience, the incredible number of flavors you encounter, and how you are completely saturated in this experience from beginning to end. Every whisky I try to compare this to just doesn't work. They are all something different. Okay, scores... yuck, this isn't a whisky you score. It's an experience you must have. I've become a bit of a more lenient grader perhaps lately, but 3.5. I'm not sure this is better than the 11-year I just sampled, but this is great, albeit more about the experience than the joy of the taste, if that makes sense.

At a time when this distillery has become the Gamestop of whisky, securing this sample counts as a small victory amid the insanity that has consumed a hardly limited release of 15,000 bottles. As a whisky, it’s good. For this distillery, it’s just par for the course, and not my favorite in the series. The nose is a sweet and sour mix evocative of honeysuckle and buttered toast. Sour citrus mingles with malty biscuit flavors in the mouth alongside a tang akin to a melted strong Cheddar. The finish oscillates between vibrant oak spice and a sour hard candy. It’s prototypical of this distillery in many regards, less cerebral than some of the earlier local barleys and sure to please anyone who actually opens their bottle. Although I generally lean to bourbon cask this distillery, I much preferred the sample of the Olorosso matured 2021 Local Barley that I tried alongside this. Sherry casks can often overwhelm the distillate, but when the balance is right the results are very satisfying. The 2021 hits the right spot, delivering a mix of walnut and umami flavors with a luscious mouthfeel. To paraphrase the meme stock investors, this one deserves to go to the moon.