Recently I reviewed the fascinating Dalmore 15 Year Old, and wanted to try something more unusual from the distillery. (By unusual, I meant not eye-wateringly, mortgage-the-house expensive.) Part of the Dalmore Rivers Collection, the Dalmore Tweed Dram is named after the ‘most prolific salmon river’ in the British isles. They give a ‘generous donation’ from the sale of every bottle to support The Tweed Foundation. Sounds like a worthy cause, but what about the taste?
Colour: deep amber, tangerine or orange peel. On the nose: a delightfully vegetative, buttery, blood orange, jammy aroma. Charming stuff. Very distant note of sea spray.
In the mouth: exquisitely silky, but alas… not the most complicated malt in the world. The flavours seem muted, it’s more of a tease than anything else. There’s a very strong malt flavour running through it, which tends to dominate in the absence of other complimentary and contradictory flavours. Perhaps gentle autumnal spices, cinnamon.
None of that impressive nose comes through. It’s strange, and I feel as if I want to like it a lot more than I do. It’s utterly mouthwatering, and the less I care about the complexity, the more I like it. And again, what a sexy texture.
This only encourages me to try more from Dalmore. They’re a fascinating distillery, even if this doesn’t quite hit the spot.
Bottled at 40% ABV, expect to pay around £40 for this – and you’ll be saving fish at the same time.
