Review by: dustbunna
Originally I bought this bottle to be our house mixer for Scotch cocktails. For anyone not familiar, Teacher’s is an inexpensive bottom-shelf blended Scotch put out by Beam Suntory– the blend built its reputation on having a high percentage of peated malt from Ardmore in their malt:grain ratio. This lighter packaging style with the embossed thistle came out in 2016, and saw them change the originally stated 45% malt content to a more ambiguous “High in Peated Malt” while still identifying that malt as Ardmore on the back of the bottle.
Scotch doesn’t always sell fast here, and I don’t know how to decipher the bottle code on this one, but I doubt this has sat on the shelf for five years (likely ~2019 with an ‘L9’ in the code). By volume, at $16 per 750mL this is the single cheapest bottle of Scotch for sale in NC, priced below J&B, Cutty Sark, JW Red, Dewar’s White, Grant’s, and Famous Grouse, and costing less even than half-size bottles of JW Black or Chivas 12. So we are in the budgetiest of budget territory here.
Distillery: Various.
Bottler: William Teacher’s & Sons.
Region: Scotland (blend).
ABV: 43%.
Age: NAS. Bottled in 2019, I think.
Cask type: Unknown but I doubt it’s anything fancy.
Price: $16 USD.
Color added and chill-filtered.
Bottle open across approx. 2 months, notes taken leisurely across that period. Bold notes taken beneath the shoulder, regular-formatted notes taken further into the bottle past the halfway point, italicized notes taken towards the heel.
Nose: vanilla, vegetal decay, faint orange and toffee, slight paper-mill funk, sweet apple juice, ash.
Palate: medium-thin ~ machine oil, dead leaves, more sweet apple juice, a bit of potpourri.
Finish: short ~ bit more machine oil, slight prickle from the ethanol, goes candy-sweet on the tail end with white sugar and a bit of grape.
Conclusion: Dear god, if you have glasses that concentrate the nose more than a Glencairn do *not* put this in there, because once it settles past the neck pour that paper-mill funk will take over completely, and turn it all but undrinkable. Some rest in the glass helps, but the choice of glassware makes an enormous difference– in a standard Glencairn it sits much further in the background, and just adds some dimension to the friendlier notes. It’s fine in a tumbler as well, but that kills the rest of the nose.
With that note receding into the supporting cast, this is actually surprisingly tasty and interesting. Sure it’s thin and fairly simple, but hey, again, it’s $16 (and I recently saw 1.75L handles of it on sale for $25!) I expected swill, honestly… and yet at least half this bottle was consumed neat in a Glencairn. Looking past the relatively thin ABV and its consequential subtlety, this kind of reminds me of a knockoff Old Pulteney spiked with Glen Scotia-esque machine oil. There may not be as much Ardmore malt in there as there likely once was, but it’s still making a difference for the quality.
Don’t expect greatness here, but don’t expect crap, either. For my money, and as long as I can keep that paper-mill note in check, Teacher’s blows every other bottom-shelf grain-forward blend I’ve tasted out of the water… and to me it’s quite a bit more engaging than Monkey Shoulder with a more interesting mix of notes in there. I would be tempted to have this in the cabinet again but only because it is so darned cheap– it’s not the best thing on the planet but anybody who’s wringing their hands over the price of even the least expensive entry-level single malts should absolutely seek this out.
Final Score: 75.
Scoring Legend:
- 95-100: As good as it gets. Jaw-dropping, eye-widening, unforgettable whisky.
- 90-94: Sublime, a personal favorite in its category.
- 85-89: Excellent, a standout dram.
- 80-84: Quite good. Quality stuff.
- 75-79: Decent whisky worth tasting.
- 70-74: Meh. It’s definitely drinkable, but it can do better.
- 60-69: Not so good. I might not turn down a glass if I needed a drink.
- 50-59: Save it for mixing.
- 0-49: Blech.
Malt Runners 