Wemyss Malts Spiced Rum Baba Single Cask Scotch Review
By Richard Thomas
Rating: B
(Credit: Wemyss Malts)
When I took a gander at my trio of samples from the Wemyss Malts Single Cask midsummer release, Spiced Rum Baba was the one I wanted to get at most. The color immediately said “Sherry butt” to me, while the label indicated it was the oldest of the bunch.
Spiced Rum Baba is a single cask, single malt whisky, and it did indeed come from a Sherry butt, this one filled at The Glenrothes in 1988. It was dumped in 2015, making this a 27 year old. That butt yielded 388 bottles, each filled at 46% ABV.
The Scotch
In the glass, the liquid has a rich, middling amber appearance, one that truly sits in bourbon territory and with legs are portly and ambling.
The nose is a touch musty on the top, an unsurprising thing after almost three decades in the cask. Yet the main character is like a peach cobbler with a scoop of rum raising ice cream. The aroma really lived up to the title with this particular Wemyss Single Cask!
Yet where the nose was vibrant, the flavor was more subtle. A silky texture moderates a rather woody current on the top, and the body is less fruity than I expected. It’s a mix of light notes: toffee, peach, spiced rum. The finish rolls off the toffee note, and lingers with moderate warmth.
While not a bad whisky, be warned that it’s not the sherry bomb one might expect from the paper statistics.
The Price
Rum Spiced Baba is listed at a whopping £132.
