SMWS - 36.81 - A mad-hatter's tea party

From the Benrinnes distillery comes this 11 year old SMWS bottling called 'A mad-hatter's tea party' and numbered 36.81 and bottled at 60,1%. Distilled on the 14th of August 2002, matured in a 1st fill ex-bourbon barrel and after bottling in 2014 producing in total 203 bottles.

Sweet nose with syrupy canned fruit, pineapple juice, freshly squeezed apple juice, ginger cake, red pepper, creamy vanilla, tutti frutti mentos candy and lots of other fruit notes. With time getting more dense on some wood notes combined with warm banana and grilled pineapple. Creamy notes of soft ripe stone fruits combined with some dense elderflower blossom notes.

The palate is warm, creamy and sweet with again the strong notes of the tutti fruity mentos candy that I found on the nose. Lots of fruit, spices and syrupy flavours like the nose. Very balanced and a decent length of finish with some vanilla ice cream notes filled with rum raisins, fudge and chocolate sprinkles. This is a sweet dessert like dram with the loads of sweet fruit notes going from red apple, to pineapple and red summer fruit, most of them warm or grilled. Scoring it an 8,5/10, lovely dram...