Review by: The Muskox

I had been saving up a special sample for my 750th review… but due to a counting error it turns out that I hit #750 without noticing. Oh well, here’s a crazy dram anyways.

Coleburn was a little-known (unless your name is Dunkhas) closed distillery located in Elgin in Speyside. The distillery operated from 1899 until it was mothballed in 1985 during the great turndown of demand known as the Whisky Loch. Its production went entirely towards blends, including Johnnie Walker Red Label. Nowadays, the distillery is actually owned by Murray McDavid, who mature their stocks in the dunnage warehouses there. Rumor has it that they plan to restart the distillery, but they haven’t released any firm plans.

This bottle was the target of my and u/smoked_herring’s visit to our local whisky bar, which is the only place around that a) has anything remotely rare like this, and b) actually sells drams of said rare bottlings for affordable prices. One wild-card at this place is that bottle turnover is extremely low, so you never know how long a bottle has been sitting at a low fill level. In this case, the bottle was still about a third full. That’s probably fine, but it seems that TOModera tasted this whisky from this exact same bottle… checks notes… seven years ago.

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Distillery: Coleburn.

Bottler: Douglas Laing.

Region: Speyside.

ABV: 50%.

Age: 28 years. Distilled in January 1971. Bottled in January 1999.

Cask type: Unknown.

Price: N/A. $28 CAD at the bar.

Color: Gold. Natural Color. Non-chill-filtered.

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Nose:

Sweet and honeyed, but with a dirty edge. Loads of sliced apples, honey-dipped (“honey made by drunken bees”, according to smoked_herring]). Sweet malt, caramel chews, and milk chocolate. Hints of orange and burnt marshmallow. As for that dirty edge, there’s a subtle coal-smoke and burnt-rubber note lurking, as well as something like caramelized fennel. A hint of sea salt, too.

A couple drops of water bring a hay note.

Palate: Full texture. Very rich – arrives with a mix of sweet flavours of extra-dark honey and tangerines, nutty toasted sesame seeds, and burning paraffin candles. It develops rapidly to deep savoury earthiness – kalamata olives, tomato vine, tobacco, and more coal smoke. Chinese sweet red bean pancake (this note was another of smoked_herring’s suggestions, and he’s completely spot-on)!! There’s a very subtle ashiness – s’mores dropped into the campfire.

Water makes things considerably sweeter here – macaroons.

Finish: Medium. All sorts of teas – there’s green tea, oolong, and a bit of lapsang souchong. Thyme, limoncello, black olives, and lingering earth.

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Possible SMWS bottling name: “Candlelit Chinese restaurant dessert”

Conclusion: Crazy stuff. This certainly delivered on the “old-school dram” experience that I was hoping for. This is a funky, earthy, industrial blunderbuss of a dram. It’s not balanced, and makes no apologies for it. It really shows how different the style of scotch whiskymaking was back in the day.

smoked_herring and I were split on whether this was better than the Glen Grant we tried just before this. I was on the high side – enamoured by the uniqueness and loudness of this dram.

Final Score: 89.

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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.