The Arran Malt 14 Year Old

The Arran 14 year old separates itself from other scotches with its slightly unusual ageing. Most scotches are 10 or 12 and then skip up to 18. This one sits at a 14 and so perhaps blends the younger scotches with the more expensive older scotches, without adding too much to the price.

This scotch comes at 46%. A definite plus.

The nose is quite complex. Fermented over ripe fruit mixed with musky grape, the fruitiness continues with a definite feel of sweet apples, pear and orange zest. There was a blend of flavours that we noticed at first to be chocolate, and then maybe chocolate ice cream and then maybe even Neapolitan ice cream. Definitely very interesting. You can linger over the nose for quite a long time. You can come back to the nose too, maybe there are some delicate hints of coffee, dates, caramelized toffee.

The palette brings out the toffee taste and adds a salty tang. To be honest, we weren't sure what that taste was, until we checked some other reviews about it. You know, during your day to day life you don't encounter a 'salty tang' often, even when you live by the ocean, but when you read 'salty tang' in a description of this and then actually taste it, yeah that's right, you can definitely taste the salty tang. Who would have known?

There's a chocolate taste that turns into an orange taste and then back to chocolate again. It's quite remarkable and delicious. The flow of great tastes continue with nuts and chocolate swirling about on your tongue.

The finish starts off with oak and then develops into chocolate, with some orange zest and a slight sweetness of raisins or dates. There's a slight hotness, with maybe a candied ginger feel.

I had this scotch a few days ago and found that the lingering taste of chocolate lasted hour and hours later. I could taste this scotch well into the night and it was so scrumptious. It got Arran on my mind, it made me think it of and how much I enjoyed it. This is probably my current favourite scotch. Highly recommended!

Would we purchase this again? Most definitely! In fact, I already plan to.