Table Of Contents
The Details
Rating | 94 |
Style |
Scotch Whiskey |
Produced In | Scotland |
ABV | 44.8% |
Availability | Limited |
Price | $5,300.00 |
Reviewed By | |
Reviewed | 2024-05-23 |
The Last Drop 40 Year Auchentoshan Single Malt Scotch Review
Sazerac-owned The Last Drop is famed for sourcing incredibly rare (often highly-aged) spirits from around the globe. Its first release of 2024 — number 34 overall in the brand’s line — is no exception. Today, we’re looking at a 40 year-old single malt Scotch from Auchentoshan Distillery.
One of just six Lowland distilleries, Auchentoshan is the only active Scotch producer to triple distill before barrel aging. Among other factors, that triple distillation contributes to Auchentoshan’s trademark lighter, often sweet profile.
Forty years in cask is enough to pique almost any whisky fan’s interest. But how will those decades impact such a delicate profile? For many fans, it’s uncommon to find Auchentoshan distillate older than 21 years, so that’s a question probably more often pondered than answered!
Let’s see how it tastes!
The Last Drop 40 Year Auchentoshan Single Malt Scotch: Pricing and Availability
The Last Drop Release No. 34 carries a suggested retail price of $5,300 and ships to select retailers and on-premise accounts in May 2024. With just 74 bottles produced, it’s unlikely there will be many bottles floating around on the open market for long.
The Last Drop 40 Year Auchentoshan Single Malt Scotch Review
As with all VinePair whisky reviews, this was tasted in a Glencairn glass and rested for at least five minutes.
Nose
Light walnut oil wafts delicately out of the glass, which gradually transitions to roasted almonds after a bit more time. It’s a progression of relatively light fatty notes that are immediately grounding without sitting heavy in the nostrils.
Fruit develops shortly thereafter, in this case freshly sliced peaches, guava, and overripe apples. Herbal aromas include faint scents of fennel seeds and dried sumac.
That restrained herbaceousness is underpinned by damp moss, hay bales, and fresh morning dew. Scents become more herbal as time goes on, more in the realm of cut grass and wildflowers than dried potpourri. Those wet, earthy components continue throughout the nose, interwoven with both fruity and oily notes.
Taste
The palate is reserved and bready at first, an initial pop of roasted hot cereal hitting the front and sides of the tongue before settling into lighter, fruity flavors. The second sip is nearly reminiscent of fruit punch in its variety: pineapple, cherry, red and green apple, peach, and pear. And that’s just to name a few — if I had a larger sample, I’m almost certain even more distinct fruit notes would develop.
This well-aged Auchentoshan has a light mouth feel that’s plenty flavorful but fickle; the first sip races down the palate, but I’m better prepared thereafter, taking small tastes and letting the whisky sit across the midpalate for as long as possible.
Additional sips bring spice and oak far beyond what the very first taste implied. Those include classic baking spices — cinnamon, nutmeg, and allspice — bolstered by a barely-there note of leather on the very cusp of detectable levels (for me, at least).
The middle and back palate build in sweetness, spice, and fruit in roughly equal proportion. Those flavors mingle into a distinct pineapple upside down cake, rich in bright caramelized sugars and lingering tropical fruit.
Finish
On the finish, the Auchentoshan continues on that fruit journey and picks up tartness on the way down. I’m actually a little disappointed here on the first couple swallows; the finish seems far more fleeting than the palate implied, even for a Scotch so delicate as this.
However, around the fourth sip, a bit of boozy alchemy occurs, and suddenly that finish gains legs and switches from brief to medium-long. The palate simply needs time to acclimate to this dram, the oils, sugars, and other compounds accumulating slowly but surely in the mouth.
The Last Drop 40 Year Auchentoshan Single Malt Scotch Rating
94/100
Recap
With Release No. 34, The Last Drop has preserved the delicate flavors associated with Auchentoshan, dialing up the complexity without undermining the distillery’s classic profile. It didn’t quite blow me away as much as some of The Last Drop’s releases have, but it’s still a noteworthy bottling that hits the brand’s core criteria: tough to chase, but rewarding when found.
*Image credit: Last Drop Distillers