The Tobermory 10 year
takes me on a trip down memory lane. The memories are not of scotch or even alcohol. Instead, it takes me back to summer evenings at my grandparent’s lake cabin on Big Cormorant Lake in Minnesota. The cabin was 1-2 hours from the house I grew up in so we’d often make it a day trip on Sundays during the summer. Although I would never have thought whisky from Scotland would share so many similarities with a northern MN lake cabin, the Tobermory 10 year is like a day at the lakes in a bottle.
Tobermory’s brackish nose is like the smell of the actual lake, or more so, the smell of the lake water pumped into the cabin for septic use. It is almost an unpleasant smell of mildew, algae, and a teeny whiff of eau d’ dead fish. However, the nose is decidedly rich with nature so though not a scotch you’d want as an air freshener, it is far from repulsive. The nose of the Tobermory is not particularly strong, unlike the deep scent of mildew that burst forth when you opened the cabin’s hall closet where the life jackets were kept. The rush to clean things up at the end of the weekend combined with Minnesota humidity prevented the classic orange u-shaped life jackets from ever fully drying out.
The 10 year has a unique vanilla taste on the palate. It is not straight vanilla but a creamier, softer taste of vanilla. My grandmother regularly kept a package of assorted sugar/cream wafers in a kitchen drawer. It was almost always the assorted pack though I was never sure who actually liked the pink ones. The 10 year’s vanilla flavor tastes just like the yellow cookies I would sneak from the package during afternoon swim breaks.
Although the Tobermory is not a smoky scotch in comparison with others, it does have a slight smokiness. The smoke on many scotches is either very peaty or oaken. Sometimes you’ll come across a sweeter, more apple-wood type smoke. Tobermory 10 year’s smoke is not that kind of smoke. It is more like birch wood. My grandparents’ cabin had a wonderful stone-lined fire pit. It is one of the things I miss most about the place. We regularly would cook hotdogs over the open fire for dinner, followed by a round of toasted marshmallows. After dinner was over and things were getting slowly packed up, I often took up the task of dumping a bucketful of lake water on the glowing coals. Birch was one of the primary woods used with those wonderful fires and the 10 years light smoke is reminiscent of the dying birch wood coals.
Unlike many scotches, the flavors of the nose, palate, and finish hold constant throughout, making it a whisky ripe with taste and memory. When I sit sipping a glass of a Tobermory 10 year, I can close my eyes and see myself back on the cabin’s deck, watching the sun set over the water while a lone fisherman tries to reel in one last catch of the day.
