The
Balvenie 40 Year Old Batch No. 2 (48.5%, OB, Bottled 2011)
Speyside
Single Malt Whisky
£2,500
 |
| The Balvenie 40 - 2nd release |
You don’t turn down opportunities like this, as they don’t come
along to often. The event was being held at the Victoria and Albert Museum in
London.
I invited friend Colin Johnson to the event, who almost bit my
arm off at the opportunity. On arrival we were treated as VIPs as most of the
other guests were from the trade.
We were able to sample a good deal of The Balvenie range of
single malts, well certainly everything that had been set up for sampling!
We tasted their 12 YO Doublewood, 12 YO Signature, 15 YO Single
Cask, 17 YO Peated Cask and of course their 21 YO Port Wood. Then the 40 YO was
brought out. Only 150 bottles produced in this limited edition bottling, 80 for
the UK market and 70 for the rest of the world. With a retail price set at
£2,500 per bottle, two were opened for our pleasure.
And
oh what a pleasure it was ! We must have spent a good five
minutes exploring the nose, it might have been longer and certainly
needed to be – it was awesome ! Then the taste – again out of this world ! I
would have to re-evaluate all my previous tastings to get things back into some
perspective. So much going on in their and the finish – again spectacular.
There was only one glass each (although it was a generous measure) and unless
the jackpot comes up, way out of my price range, but it was a wonderful
experience. To end the evening we were each presented with a bottle from their
entry level malts, Colin came away with a bottle of Doublewood and for me The
Signature. Thank you Balvenie !
