Three Open Bottles, What To Do, What To Do?

I keep my bottles of scotch on top of the fridge.  Well, all my liquor goes there, but it just so happens that most of it is scotch.

Over the last six months, since I've been blogging, my scotch tasting has gone into an absolute frenzy.  I have scoured stores and the internet for good deals on bottles to taste and to review.

It got expensive.

I also arrived at a - great! - problem to have:

I had tons and tons of scotch.

However, scotch doesn't last forever.  Once opened, the length of time before the bottle starts to lose flavor is inversely related to how much of the bottle has been drunk.  Put differently, the less there is in the bottle, the more quickly it'll go bad.

Dalmore 15 Review and Tasting Notes

The Story

The Dalmore is among the most highly regarded scotch distilleries and is well known for its characteristic orange peel flavor profile.

The Dalmore 15 spends its first 12 years maturing in American white oak ex-bourbon casks.  However, this is where things get far, far more interesting, as the whisky is then split into three even shares which spend the final 3 years of maturation in 3 different types of sherry casks, Amoroso, Apostles, and Matusalem oloroso.  At the end of this, the final maturation occurs when the three strains are mixed into a single sherry butt to allow the flavors to optimally fuse.

I was very excited about this bottle.  As a sherried scotch lover, a simple sherry cask finish will get me going, but three different types of sherry casks mingled into one scotch!  A fifteen year old blend, which was at the time of my first tasting, the oldest scotch I'd ever had!  Plus, at ~$75 (depending on who you buy from) it was definitely at the upper limit of my price range.