Balvenie 'Doublewood' 17

This is another one that I first got to try due to someone else's generosity, which I subsequently grabbed for myself... This is one that rather indulgently filled the gap left my the Balvenie Caribbean Cask, a personal favourite.

When people ask me about the Doublewood 17 I usually describe it as being like a whisky version of Galaxy chocolate, it's all about the smooth, creamy sweetness. That works for me as a short description but it's a lot more complex than that - as I think you would expect from an expensive whisky compared to a chocolate bar!

On the nose there's honey and brown sugar, and on the palate it moves on to vanilla and an array of cocoa influenced flavours; the full spectrum (if that's the term for chocolate) from white to high percentage cocoa dark chocolate. There are also all the sherried notes you'd expect  in there; spicy dried fruit and almond.

It has a lot more depth and complexity than the hugely popular Doublewood 12, and while the 12 is a smooth easy drinker the 17 is that much smoother. If I can use a rather random analogy - if you've ever seen a golf green on television in standard definition then switched over to the HD version you see all of the imperfections not picked up before; the 17 kind of highlights where the 12 falls short. The problem is of course that when you go back to the 'standard definition' 12, you'll know what you're missing.