LPA Vintage Week: today (soapy) Edradour 1976
If there is one single malt whisky that I am always reluctant to put in the glass, it is Edradour. The output from this distillery has such a distinctive signature, that you either love it or hate it. In more recent years, and especially during the pandemic lockdown, some fantastic dark sherry matured expressions came out, especially via Signatory and their Dutch sibling The Ultimate. We are smack in the middle of the LPA Vintage Week, and we found a vintage Edradour that is dreaded by many. The average score on Whiskybase does not touch the 70 points baseline. This must be bad stuff, but we are tasting anyway, determined to experience.
Edradour 1976, 25 years old, bottled at 49 % abv by James McArthur
First things first: Bottled in the Old Master’s – Cask Strength Selection from cask # 166.
Upon Sipping: The nose reveals what we will taste on the palate, which is not something you want to find in the glass, however distinctive it is. Pure handsoap. Even a flowerbed in full bloom does not smell so chemically fragrant as this Edradour 1976. We have to wonder what the good people at James McArthur were thinking by bottling this. It smells like my grandma’s perfume, so in a way, it is also a nostalgic fragrance. To stay on the positive side, it is without a doubt the most unique nose you will find in a single malt whisky. On the tongue, it opens quite sweet and oily, with sour lemons to start with, and then it goes down on a slippery slope that was painted with green soap. An overload of vanilla, lavender, Polish jelly with honey flavour. Violet must taste like this. On its best, it smells like a hot summer day in a flower field that badly needs a drop of rain, on its worst it is like sucking the juice out of a wet toilet wipe.
Word to the Wise: A very educational whisky. I have had soapy whisky before, lord knows, but this one seems without flaw and therefore fully intentionally made the way it is presented. It is also full on Edradour. They wanted it to come out exactly like this. That brings me to the conclusion: you either love it, or you hate it. There is no middleground.
Score: 68 points.