Always interesting to taste Springbanks, especially cask strength and single sherry casks ones. This was bottled for Potstill Austria from cask #296 yielding 216 bottles at 57.1 % ABV.
Springbank 1997 single cask #296 for Potstill Austria, 57.1 % ABV , 216 btl
Nose: A very nice mixture of both sweet sherry notes, and salty briny seaweed sort of notes you can expect from a Springbank… leather, and then some exotic fruit (papaya and ripe melon). grass, wet hay, a bit on the on the farmy side too.
palate: Very rich, at first woody and drying , then sweeter with the intense sherry, then off to salty realms. Getting sweeter towards the end, with a sort of dried dates sweetness, almost honey like, but with that saltiness that balances things out, a whiff of smoke and then some burnt sugar a bit of gingery zing too. more on the sweet than on the salty side.In one sentence : it’s like eating a dried date spread sandwich sitting on a fishing boat.
Finish : sweet dried dates spread, sea salt, and smoke.
A very good Springbank, with just what you can expect from a sherry cask, with the coastal notes which are by now the Springbank signature.
Score: 89/100
many thanks to Andreas for the sample