Orkney 15 Year Old 2002 [Berry Bros. for TWB]

Yet another mystery ‘Orkney’ malt, which is not a Scapa 😉 You get it , right?

This one’s from a Sherry Butt, and bottled at a nice 56.8% after 15 years of maturation in the cask. not quite sure what cask #3 means, probably it’s an internal numbering done by BBR. Distilled in 2002, for a total of 180 bottles. I wonder how come there are so few bottles, probably only a part of the cask was bottled for TWB ?

At any rate this is quite different than the TWE Black Friday bottling (from the same distillery) I sampled recently.

Orkney 15 Year Old 2002 [Berry Bros. for TWB] , 56.8% ,£80 , TWB 

 

Nose : a lovely melange of sweet sherry notes, tobacco, and Heather honey with a lovely smoky touch. Leather, a hint of rubber too per the sherry cask.. Dried fruit and marzipan. 
Palate: very nice wood influence with toasted oak, chocolate and dried fruit, mainly date, fig and Sultana. Oily, and mouth coating, with pepper and quite some sherry tannins, touches of rubber. Ending on honeyed Sultana and smoke. 
Finish : chocolate, raisin and nut, sweet smoke. 
This is a rather yummy big sherry Highland park, with enough smoke and lots of sweet sherried fruit, to make any HP fan happy. There’s quite some dirty sherry going on here (rubber, sulfur), for me it’s lovely, but some people are not big fans of this profile, so take heed.

Score: 88/100

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