Glenmorangie Quinta Ruban

It's been a quiet whisky week. Starting work led to fewer sleeping hours, and I didn't want to drink when the body was already not resting enough. So, no new entry for a long while. Ok, it's just been slightly over a week, but that's pretty long, no?

Now that I've a bit more time, and have gotten over the shame of thinking that Dalwhinnie is a lowland malt, here's a new entry, albeit of a whisky that's been out in the market for a long time: The Glenmorangie Quinta Ruban.

The Quinta Ruban is matured in port casks, and is aged for 12 years old. I think the standard Glenmorangie 10 was matured for an extra 2 years in port pipes. Perhaps due to the lightness of the Glenmorangie 10, the 2 years in port pipes dominates the whisky and gives this quite a winey profile.

Glenmorangie Quinta Ruban (abv 46%)

Colour: almost ruby. I'm not biased by the name of the whisky in my description of colour. Really!

Nose: Port wine - sweet, almost cloyingly so. Very ripe berries. There's some bit of oak, and it smells...alcohol-y. Behind the berries...a small bit of raisins, and a bit of...tannin? Promises of tannins?

Palate: This burns on first taste, though the alcohol dies pretty fast. The sweetness of the port takes over to smoothen out the palate, though it almost becomes too sweet. Port wine type of sweet - so, a bit more cloying on very ripe berries. There's a light touch of sour and oak, but the port influence is dominant. Water brings out a bit of vanilla and malt, but the port influence doesn't go down by much.

Finish: Even the finish is sweet, though the oak influence is a bit stronger here. Quite some spice - cinnamon, saffron, nutmeg, I think. But port and oak is the dominant taste here. The oak turns rather dry on wood tannins.

Overall: Hmm. Pretty decent, though, as noted before, I don't think I can finish 1 litre of this. It's nice and certainly has a very well-defined identity, and slots in well in Glenmorangie's range of finished whiskies. Pretty good if you want a port-finished whisky, but maybe not if you don't like whiskies sweet. It's got more character than the Glenmorangie Quarter Century, I feel. Not as polished, but I like my whiskies with more character.