Review: Dewar’s 25 Year Old

Dewar's 25 Year OldDewar’s 25 Year Old – 40% abv

Info: Dewar’s 25 Year Old is a blend of malt and grain whiskies that are 25yo or older that have then been married and then further aged in freshly emptied Royal Brackla casks. Available in Global Travel Retail (i.e airport duty-free) before eventually being available everywhere.
Colour: Golden and bright. Hints of rust.
Nose: Straight away there’s older oak cask notes that happily fill your nose. However you quickly find there’s lovely fresh tones there, light summery fruits, slightly pulped down into a sweet compote of flavour.
Palate: Surprisingly oily considering the 40% abv. It’s sweet, tasty and really easy-going on your tongue. Bags of flavour backed up by well-integrated old oak notes that aren’t dominated by tannin.
Finish: The finish is slow, long and gentle; it’s nicely warming on your chest, with sweet barley oils sticking around for ages. Yum.
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My Dewar’s Last Great Malts Trip – Day Two

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So, I’ve been on a Last Great Malts trip, kindly put on by Dewar’s… To read about day one of the trip, go here.

Day 2, and it’s a bright and early start. Actually, I tell a lie, it’s an early start with a sore head, but a good full Scottish breakfast and coffee later and the world seems just about right again. Which is a good thing as we’re straight back onto the coach for the next part of our tour. It’s a different coach to yesterday, we won’t mention the mishap the day before.
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My Dewar’s Last Great Malts Trip – Day One

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Last week I was one of a lucky few to be invited up to Scotland by Dewar’s to look around their distilleries. Termed the ‘Last Great Malts’, Dewar’s have taken the step to release single malt whiskies from their distilleries which, until now have mostly only been used in blending or seen as single malts in the independent bottlers world.

This is great news within the category because Dewar’s are rather going against the grain here… their releases all have age statements, and where the bottles are new to market they’re being released at 46% non chill filtered and with no colour, with existing releases (Aberfeldy 12yo for example) being changed over time to match. Big congrats to Dewar’s for this as many other brands at the moment are increasingly releasing more and more no age statement whiskies which are filtered, coloured and reduced to within an inch of their lives with water.
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