Give Dalwhinnie full credit: they tell you what you’re about to drink and they deliver, marking the neck of the bottle with the words, ‘The Gentle Spirit.’ This is very pleasant to drink. It’s light and although it’s described as heathery- whatever that means, I would strongly recommend this bottle to anyone looking to get into Single Malts. It’s an excellent entry point.
Dalwhinnie has been around since 1898 and apart from a fire that closed the distillery for four years (1934-1938) and World War II (most distilleries shut down due to wartime restrictions on the use of barley) it’s been producing since then. Interestingly, in 1905 it was purchased by the largest distillers in the United States (Cook and Bernheimer) and they started blending Dalwhinnie with other whiskies “to suit the American palate.” Prohibition (1919) saw the distillery return to Scottish ownership.
In 1988, the Dalwhinnie 15 was named one of the Six Classic Malts of Scotland (Glenkinchie 10, Cragganmore 12, Oban 14, Talisker 10 and Lagavulin 16 were the others) and I do think that it’s a title richly deserved for Dalwhinnie.
I do have two things I’m curious about when it comes to this whiskey, however. First, I wonder about the American influence in all of this— it would be fascinating to find out what exactly they thought ‘suited the American palate’ back in the early part of the 20th Century versus what might suit it today. Did they start out aiming for something light, delicate and heathery? Did they just sort of back into the whole ‘Gentle Spirit’ thing on accident? American ownership lasted for fourteen years— so it’s not a statistically insignificant amount of time.
Second, I’ve got geography questions here. Wikipedia labels Dalwhinnie as being in the Speyside region, but the map over on this Wiki page doesn’t appear to line up with the geography. I know it’s a small nitpick, since because Speyside is totally within the Highland region, a lot of whiskies can be labelled as both, so it might not be worth noting. I dug a little further and some measuring on the Google Maps reveals that the distiller is actually only five miles away from the River Spey, so it kind of makes sense? I guess? (Memo to self: in addition to learning more about how to describe the color of whiskey, learn about how all these whisky regions work.)
Anyway, here are the tasting notes I put together for the Dalwhinnie 15— as always, I did multiple tastings and waited until at least the third tasting before I looked up some other tasting notes, just to eliminate the whole ‘power of suggestion’ thing I want to avoid.
Nose: Crisp! I want to say that it puts me in mind of freshly cut grass, but I’ve never really smelled that. Apples? There is a sweetness here— I want to call it honey, but that’s not quite right. These tasting notes reference cinnamon/nutmeg which might be closer to the mark.
Color: Pale yellow/straw was my first impression, but in the spirit (ha!) of wanting to go a little deeper with my color descriptions, I went and found a yellow color palette chart. Going by this, I would say it’s a toss up between ‘Mellow’ and ‘Banana’— ‘Cream’ and ‘Royal’ are also pretty close.
Body: Some spice and burn on the tongue, but manages to have light viscosity without being weak, if that makes sense. (I didn’t think, ‘Man, this is kind of weak, watery stuff’ put it that way.)
Finish: These tasting notes I found on The Whisky Exchange have a very different take than I did. I would agree with ‘clean and fresh’ and the finish, but if there’s a touch of smoke to this, it’s… really delicate. (‘Heathery’ seems to be a word that pops up a lot when talking about this whisky— I’m going to imagine that the heather of Scotland is probably pretty hardy to survive in that climate, but might also be delicate and gentle stuff. This is definitely not peaty in the way an Islay is though.) In the end though, it more than lives up to the billing of ‘The Gentle Spirit.’ My Grade 8/10