Review 230. A 28 year old blended malt combining the best (?) of Islay, Orkney and Speyside

I love whisky festivals. They are a great place to meet up with old and new friends and likeminded folk. It’s an ideal location and set-up to catch up, talk all things whisky and then some, all while enjoying (a lot) of enjoyable and excellent whiskies. Often for a fraction of the cost of having to go out there and actually buy all those bottles or try them in a dedicated whisky bar. Good for the morale, relatively safe on the wallet but not so friendly on the liver. What whisky festivals aren’t particularly good for, in my opinion, is really assessing a whisky. Sure we can appreciate something, marvelling even at whatever golden nectar has been poured in our glass, but truly getting to know or analysing the whisky: that tends not to happen at a festival. For starters there’s far too much distraction as you’re usually just engaging in small talk or conversations, meaning the focus of attention is not dedicated, or not at least fully,  to what’s in the glass. Secondly, festivals are usually quite crowded, meaning a lot of background noise, which also doesn’t help and finally, even when you meticulously rinse out your glencairn-of-the-day after each pour, after x number of whiskies all poured in that same glass, it’s downright impossible to give the whisky a fair evaluation. Because not only will your glass be ‘tainted’ by what was inside previously but even more importantly there’s the simple matter of your palate. Which just isn’t up to scratch when you ‘ve been nosing and sipping sometimes a dozen or more whiskies throughout the day.

At my first ever festival though, I was pretty much doing the exact opposite, taking ‘the academical approach’. I came prepared and had studied all the brands and bottlers that would attend well in advance, arriving with notes on which brands I desperately wanted to try and in which order, notebook at the ready to put to words all the marvels I would encounter that day. An eager padawan with much to learn, and indeed when you’re new into whisky and keen to explore, a visit to a whisky festival is a bit like arriving at the pearly gates of heaven (or something resembling a 19th century British Academic on his first field trip to the heart of the jungle to study the local wildlife: naïve, eager and prepared in the sense that he’s arrived with a ton of book knowledge and in full ‘jungle gear’, yet blissfully unaware and by no means ready for what is about to go down). So these days it’s a social gathering to me first and foremost, with the whiskies not necessarily playing second fiddle, but certainly not at the heart and centre of things. Sure when something absolutely wonderful crosses my path, I tend to take a picture of the bottle and make a quick note of it on my phone, hoping that whatever I managed to write down after being ‘well lubed’ on the inside makes even a shred of sense when revisiting it the next day. And because whisky festivals do tend to offer you the possibility of trying stuff you likely wouldn’t otherwise (on account of being well beyond your financial means or because you couldn’t possibly find it anywhere else), I’ve since long left behind pen and paper but to this day I do tend to bring along a set of empty sample bottles, or when the event hosts offers them at the entrance, just pick up a set upon arrival.

Knowing you’ll be stumbling on some higher end, or rare whiskies, asking for them to be poured in a sample bottle to be enjoyed later, is THE way forward in my honest opinion. If anything, it also helps prevent over endulging during the actual event, so it’s a win- win situation.

And that’s exactly what I did with today’s sample.

Murray Mcdavid The Coastal Embrace (1995-2024) 28 year old blended malt (Islay, Orkney, Speyside). Chapter 1 – bourbon hogshead matured and cognac puncheon finished, NC, UCF, 55.1% ABV, 447 bottles, app. €140 - €150 (£120 - £125)

Murray McDavid is one of those bottlers that’s been around seemingly forever. Or at least to me as they were already well established when I started to develop a serious interest in whisky. And indeed, they have been going strong for 3 decades, celebrating their 30th anniversary just last year, meaning they set up shop probably at exactly the right time – in the mid 19990’s, when the worst of the whisky loch from the previous decade was over, and the industry was slowly yet steadily starting to recover. On paper their timing was perfect as around that time it would still be easy picking from a lot of distilleries without having to sell half your organs on the dark web. Which, again on paper, today’s review should  be a prime example off. This 28 yo whisky is part of the ‘Coastal Embrace’ releases, a series of 5 different blended malts from coastal distilleries across 3 different regions, which were matured for 28 years, all starting out in bourbon barrels for some 22-23 years before being given a finish (or more accurately a second maturation) in different other vessels – from cognac to rum to different sherry casks (1 in a PX and 1 in an Oloroso) and a wine barrique.

Nose

(Green) apples, salted caramel, gently roasted coffee and a touch of wood and nutty notes. Hints of grass and heather mixed in with some sweet and sour notes of honey, vanilla and citrus. There’s this varnish – wood polish like note that betrays and suggests age and depth.

Palate

Dry, full woody and wood – oily arrival. Dried oranges, bitter chocolate and coffee notes. It has a bit of a bite, so I’ve added a few drops of water (easy does it with whiskies from a certain age) and I ‘m immediately getting notes of leather, tobacco and ginger joining in.

Finish

Long and drying and the wood influence echoes on for quite a while.

Final thoughts

Just short of 3 decades of maturation and indeed it shows as the wood influence makes itself present from nose to finish. It’s by no means all about the wood, but those flavours coming from the casks do make a big mark (leather, tobacco, spices…) making you put in an effort to see what else is there. But when you dig past those, there’s indeed enough happening to balance things out, making this an interesting and, all things considered, very fairly priced whisky. That said, if you look at the malts used to create these releases (Laphroaig, Bunnahabhain, Highland Park and a few (undisclosed) Speysiders – all pretty high end stuff) I can’t help but feel the end result should perhaps be something utterly magical. And while this is good, very good even, it just lacks that little extra something to completely sweep me off my feet.