Been meaning to grab one…. Now I will 🎉 Cheers 🥃

I have enjoyed a bottle. It is really quite classic and gets better as it goes down the bottle. Fine review Shane. Happy Christmas Eve 🎄🥃👍S.

Christmas Eve is saved! Solid entry level with good age statement in craft presentation from bourbon barrel priced reasonable.( still can find for £40). What we can want more? More like this please. Cheers and Slàinte 🥂 Have a Good Christmas Shane and cross the fingers for something special on Christmas Day 😁🥂🙋🏻‍♂️

🥃🎅😁🎁

Have not had much Balblair , I will need to hit my friend up for some samples. Cheers on day 24 one more to go!

Good luck for No.25

ABout "un-sherried Speyside" : SPeyside is part of the Highlands, without sherry (as in this case) = a true Highlander , in this case a Northern one = perfect detective sense ! - reverse logics/deduction is fun !

Not had the 18, tried the 15 last year and it was bloody lovely.

Glad you got better dram than yesterday's 😊 thanks for the video

Totally agree with your notes on this one. Far too much mucking around with whisky these days. Take a good spirit, put it in good bourbon casks and leave it alone. Result - the type of whisky I love. Talking of love; I used to love Balblair, especially their ex-bourbon range. I still have a 1997 (18) and 1983 (30) in the bunker but have fond memories of 10 and 12 year vintages too. I've been so upset by what's happened to them they've vanished off the radar. The 12 is the only one in the range that is purely ex-bourbon I think. I recently had a fantastic young Rattray Balblair ex-bourbon bottled at cask strength that reminded me how good Balblair can be.

I've been loving these vids and trying to guess what the whisky is from your description. I managed to guess 4 correctly, the Craigellachie 13, Deanston 12, Ledaig Rioja, and Old Pulteney 12. Can't wait for the last one to see if it will knock the Smoky Scot from #1 position.

Hi Shane, Merry Christmas to you & glad for you that you had a nice dram for that special occasion....on my side I haven't tried the 15 & 18 yo yet, unfortunately, as distribution of this brand isn't great here I have to say (in fact, never seen the 18 yo on any shelf yet !), but I own a bottle of the 10 yo which will be replaced for sure...Also had a nice SC sample from Menno & never had a bad one in indies too...Cheers !

I had the BB 12 side by side with the old vintage 10 year old. Sad to say the Vintage 10 year old blew the 12 away. That 10 year old that they used to make was killer and now it is gone.

I love what you do with thwse reviews - though i have been watching for over a year, this is my first time commenting - just wanted to say thanks and happy holidays to you and yours!

Tasty pour, not as available for me in the US as I would like it to be.

Hi Shane, good review! Agree with everything you said. I had the pleasure of visiting Balblair last year and have the fancy warehouse tour and tasting. We had the full 12-15-18-25 line-up as well as a single cask offering and a cask sample. Great stuff. The only beef I have (but I guess this is just the sign of the times) is that when I compare the 1990 vintage (23yo) with the current 25yo, the 1990 is slightly better in my opinion. Yet I bought the 1990 back in the day for less than €100, whereas the 25yo would now set me back €500. And for that kind of money I would rather buy some IB single cask >30yo cask strength offering of (almost) any distillery. Hurray for the IB’s, I guess. Oh well. Cheers! And Merry Christmas ;-)

Hi Shane. I was a bit peeved ,to say the least when balblair dropped the vintage releases and saw what the prices of the new core range were and still are (except the 12). Just to think the 1991 vintage (26 yrs old) cost me less than the new 18 years!! Haven’t bought anything from balblair since the re- vamp. Saying that I might just give the 12 a try. Slàinte Shane 🥃

Today was the first whisky I guessed correctly from your description. Really solid dram, mad that you can pick up a litre bottle for £36 at uk airports. Loving this advent calendar series. All the best , merry Xmas

Good to see a Balblair bourbon-matured dram do so well in the tasting, Shane! Going back a few years to Balblair's "revamp" it wasn't so much the abandonment of the vintage bottlings which annoyed me, but the "premiumisation" of the pricing for the new 15-, 18- and 21-year-old expressions. Five or six years ago it was still possible to buy a vintage 1991 or 1990 for around €130 to €140 in Germany (and the 1983 for just €240) - they were 25 or 26 year old expressions packed in beautiful gift boxes. Yeah, I know I shouldn't moan about "the good old days" and humane pricing back then. Anyway, the effect of the new premium pricing regime on me was that I simply stopped buying Balblair. The standard new 12-year-old is good value, as you said. No problems there. And I've heard some very good things about both the new 15- and 18-year-olds, too. So the quality is still excellent - it's still being made by the same crew with the same methods of distilling new make in the same distillery. And the blending is still top quality when it comes to getting the final mix of the liquid into the bottles. If only the pricing gods hadn't blurred Inver House management's vision. Ach, not to worry. I've got plenty of the "old stock" left for quite a while yet. Cheers and merry Christmas!

I love the Balblair 12 too & I agree there should be more output like this. Reminds me of Aultmore and many of the Flora & Fauna are like this (singular syle base spirit as you say). I encourage you to try the F&Fs if you havent already. ( just forget their from Diageo & enjoy them for what they are). I also found half a treaspoon of water (Ralfy style) & left for 10-15 mins really opens up the Balblair beautifully too.

Love to watch your vids on the actual day of advent, even though i’m based in the future. Which makes me wonder do you drink and review these drams at 7 or 8am….? 😅 I kinda hope so but you seem too reasonable to be an early morning drinker for a whole month 😉 Love this series!

Here here, the world is running towards a anything shinney, gimmicky, with addons, short term new new new, cheap, eye catching, blar blar blar.