Arran 1996 – 26 YO – 53.3% – Bottled Exclusively for Denmark – Blog Post by Luka Gottschalk

The color is light and amber-golden, not exactly screaming “sherry bomb.”
The aroma is soft and sweet, with gentle notes of orange, grapefruit, and cinnamon.
The taste is mellow, yet deep and rich at the same time. As the color suggested, this is no sherry bomb despite its 26 years in a sherry cask. The distillery’s house style – which is, by the way, one of its strongest qualities – is beautifully represented with notes of pineapple, grapefruit, ripe melons, green apples, and a bold hit of freshly ground black pepper.
The finish offers darker notes of forest berries, along with a lovely touch of honey and coconut. The forest berry note lingers impressively long after the sip.

As the experienced whisky lover likely already knows, older whiskies truly benefit from some time in the glass. According to a certain jovial gentleman on YouTube – whom many of us know well – a good rule of thumb is to let your whisky sit in the glass one minute for every year it spent in the cask. This charming Arran is no exception; several of its notes only revealed themselves after about half an hour in the glass.

As for the whisky itself, I would say it’s an incredibly approachable Single Malt – without ever becoming dull or unremarkable. It is calm, gentle, deep, and beautifully balanced. Exactly what one would expect from a mature Single Malt. The price has, understandably, increased compared to their excellent NAS bottlings I briefly mentioned earlier. However, I still consider it reasonably priced given both the age and the cask strength.