
July 8, 2016

Little duets, today Imperial

Time gap today, 33 years.

Imperial 20 yo 1995/2015 (56.3%, Signatory Vintage, for Acla Selection, Switzerland)

Signatory already had several excellent 1995 Imperials. No small fish here! Colour: pale gold. Nose: what a distillate! Totally and plainly orchardy, with a solid background made out of beeswax and sunflower oil. Perfect maltiness. Mirabelle jam, crystallised quinces, overripe apples, hazelnuts… All is perfect in here. With water: gets farmyardy. Indeed, cities get boring, we all need simpler lives. Mouth (neat): how very perfect. Lemon, malt, cake, fresh nuts, oranges, perhaps a little patchouli, light vanilla, white pepper… The combo works to perfection. Perhaps a pinhead of mustard, which I already found in earlier Imperials. With water: swims like an athlete from the ex-USSR. More lemon, also kiwis, orange blossom honey, grapefruits… Finish: long, zesty, yet rather fat and ‘wide’. Some richness. Pepper aftertaste. Comments: really a perfect ‘average’ malt whisky. Average meaning ‘not extreme’ in this context. SGP:652 - 88 points.

So, an older bottling, we said. Like this?...

Imperial 18 yo 1962/1980 (46%, Cadenhead, Dumpy, Black Label, 75cl)

We already tried this baby here on this lousy website, but that was ten years ago. I’ve been mildly disappointed, so let’s give it another go. From a different bottle, of course. Colour: amber-coffee. Nose: ceps and other wonderful wild mushrooms, black trumpets, morels… That’s just the start, because it tends to go towards rhum agricole after that, with black olives and some sugar cane, then rather beef cooked in honey sauce, spare ribs in chilli sauce, soy sauce, umami, a box of cigars, very old oloroso (there must be some inside), or perhaps antique palo cortado… What an astounding complexity! Mouth: yeah, I know what may have bothered me a bit last time, it starts a little soapy and even ‘lavendery’, ala Bowmore from the 1980s. What’s much better is that it gets then immensely complex, totally deep, and fantastically tertiary. More cigars, more oils, more coal tar and pitch, more resins and saps, and more meaty, bouillony things. Like, indeed, wee pieces of ceps and morels, marrow, lard, chives, summer truffles… And chocolate. Yes, chocolate. Finish: medium, very chocolaty. Reminds me of that Mexican chocolate sauce, mole. Liquorice in the aftertaste. Comments: many modern malts are pictures, this is an odyssey. And it was a much better bottle than ten years ago, thanks a lot Carsten. SGP:462 - 92 points.

Check the index of all Imperial I've tasted so far