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The Arran Malt 18 Years Old & The Arran Malt Amarone Cask Finish

For something a little different this week, I'm going to do a side-by-side with two products from The Arran distillery in Lochranza on the Isle of Arran. The distillery opened in 1995 and has operated continuously since then; unusually, it remains independently owned and operated. The two products I'll be sampling today are an unpeated 18 year old single malt whisky and an Amarone cask finished single malt with no age statement. For those unfamiliar with the wine, Amarone is a kind of dry, red Italian wine, produced in Valpolicella out of dried grapes. The drying of the grapes concentrates the sugars and flavors in the grape and produces a strong (15% and up) and distinctly flavored wine. Production of Amarone is painstaking and risky and the resulting wine is comparatively rare and expensive.

The Arran Malt 18 year old is sherry cask finished and bottled at 92 proof. The malt pours a clear yellow with gilded highlights. First lifting the glass, it's quite soft on the nose; creamed wheat topped with maple syrup, and dried strawberries alongside fresh yogurt. Give it a while to open up and it yields more of a feinty, oxidative profile, bringing out more wood spice and vanilla. Palate is rougher than expected after nosing, highlighted by bright, almost solventy feints. Slightly fruity, edging towards raspberry, with a tannic edge and slightly more softness in the finish. Some oaty roundness to the body, with a full, but not flabby mouthfeel. The overall experience if not overly distinctive, a good choice for anyone interested in mature spirits but turned off by the abundance of oak and spice typical in the 15+ year old range.

The Amarone cask finish pours a pale rose gold, noticeably colored by the finish. Nose opens to cherry syrup with a sugary sweetness cut through by wine tannins and a strong drying oak finish, while little peaks of chewy malt pop up throughout. Palate is well-spiced and sweet—cherries and peaches candied with cinnamon—with a rising heat that pulls into a dry, almost astringent finish. Hints of tobacco and cascara do their best to lend some gravitas to the situation, but the intense cinnamon spice almost gives the impression of a flavored whiskey. If, for whatever reason, you were inclined to spend upwards of $60 on a bottle of Scotch for your buddy with the novelty "Fireball" socks, this would be the bottle to buy. There's no age statement here, so my suspicion is that there's some quite young malt blended in to brighten and sweeten the palate, which might also contribute to the relatively high bottling proof of 100, and likely the cause of the cinnamon "burn" which decimates the mid-to-end palate. Indeed, proofing down opens a youthful, citrus dominated, feint-forward profile, which is not unpleasant, but eliminates the more interesting elements of the cask finish. I imagine that an unblended example of this cask finish would be intensely bitter and drying, though probably quite interesting, maybe if I ever get a chance to drop by I'll ask if I can have some.

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