Robert Burns Blended Scotch Whisky

This was one that I avoided for a while. Nothing about it seemed right. It's named after Scottish Poet Robert Burns... to be honest, I'm not really a fan but am pretty ignorant of Robbie Burns. My parents are Scottish and so I know "Wee, sleekit, cow'rin, tim'rous beastie" but had to look it up to get it right and I only know that one line. That's pretty much as far as it goes.

Maybe I went into this biased.

This Scotch doesn't really do his apparent legend any service. The nose is pretty simple and all we get out of it is a new young malty scent. The palete continues in the simplicity with some general scotch sweetness, not quite caramel, but close. It's not rich or terribly flavourful. There's maybe some fruitiness in there, but faint. Some further sweetness in the finish, maybe a little oak. Quick and again simple.

Maybe this should be an introduction to scotch scotch. Maybe give this to someone to give them the basic idea of what scotch is, completely lacking anything else... then you proceed to let them expand their ideas of scotch with scotches that have more complexity, more taste and are just generally better.

Maybe I'd buy this again but probably not. It runs at $30.87 Canadian in Nova Scotia, which is a little more expensive than all the other low end scotches. It's 40% and comes in a European 700ml bottle (although I've seen on the internet that European versions of this are 43%). I'd rather get J&B or Famous Grouse because they're less expensive for more and probably better.