The Whisky

Legless Scotsman's tasting notes:

Aged 3 Years, cask strength 70.6%
Colour: Honey gold
Nose 23 points: floral, honey, fruity, raisins, vanilla
Taste 23 points: medium-bodied, medicine, floral, fruity
Finish 23 points: long finish
Balance 23 points:
Total points: 92.
Speyside-type Finnish single malt. Excellent local choice.
Remember after first sniff and taste to put some crystal
clear water in it to smooth it down.

Aged 4 years, d 20.3.2004, b January 2008, Cask strength 70.6%
Colour: copper
Nose 24 points: sweet, oaky, licorice, black powder, honey, beewax
Taste 24 points: full-bodied, sweet, winey, salty, medicine, madeira
Finish 23 points: long and sweet finish
Balance: 24.
Total points: 95. (Just awsome Finnish single malt. Excellent...)

Aged 5 Years, cask strength 70.6%
• Bottles #86 & #99
Colour: amber
Nose 23 points: sweet, fruity, spicy, earthy, mint
Taste 23 points: medium-bodied, malty, perfumed
Finish 21 points: long finish
Balance 23 points.
Total points: 90 points.
Note! Bottles #86 & 99 are from the same batch
• Barrel #4, d 20.3.2004, b 10.7.2009
Colour: amber
Nose 24 points: sweet, candy, teabag, winey, sherry, floral, honeysuckle, beach mattress, dried fruits, leather
Taste 23 points: full-bodied, sweet, honey, floral, cut barley, winey
Finish 23 points: long & stray finish
Balance 23 points.
Total points: 93.

Aged 6 Years, cask strength 70.6%
• Barrel #4, d 20.3.2004, b 14.4.2010
Colour: dark deep red, sherry
Nose 24 points: sherry, smooth, honey, madeira, roasted sugar, coffee, winey, dark chocolate
Taste 24 points: full-bodied, honey, plum, prunes, ripe fruits, sherry, oily, peach
Finish 24 points: coffee, fruity, honey, sherry, long finish
Balance 24 points.
Total points: 96 points.
Jim Murray's tasting notes:

• First release, cask #2, distilled 25.11.2001, bottled November 2004
Nose 23 points: Golden Gordon breakfast cereal. The slightly burnt ones with honey.
Taste 24 points: Breathtakingly intense barley concentrate and toasted honeycomb; the brown sugars dissolve in layers: spellbinding...
Finish 23 points: Those neo-bourbon notes continue. Some liquorice, inevitably, gets in on the act. The bittersweet balance is textbook: mind you... you'd expect a great Finnish, wouldn't you...
Balance 23.5 points: What an unexpected treat!
Total points: 93.5 points.

• Second release, cask #5, distilled 25.2.2003, bottled July 2007
Nose 24 points: I assume Finland is part of Kentucky. Pure bourbon: with the nose offering every degree of honeycomb-liquorice imaginable...
Taste 24 points: I am no longer in my chair... I have been catapulted to the furthest recess of my tasting room... the delivery nigh defies description, other than that we are talking huge - and I mean bloody gargantuan - degrees of Manuka honey and oak on its sweetest, toastiest foam...
Finish 24 points: long, so enormously long. Just carries on the bourbon theme with the oak throbbing out waves og liquorice and hickory and the spices just pulse merrily away and never for one moment either losing balance or dredging up unwanted notes from either cask or still...
Balance 24 points: It's as though they have been distilling George T Stagg...!! Quite amazing: perhaps the surprise package of the year. I thought the first bottling was a freak. This really does send you not so much into another orbit but an entirely parallel universe. Buck me...!!!
Total points: 96 points.
EUROPEAN MAINLAND WHISKY OF THE YEAR! (Jim Murray's Whisky Bible 2009)

"In the end the title went to Finland for the very first time, until now not exactly a nation that immediately springs to the lips when you are thinking of Grade A distilling countries. The catchily named Panimoravintola Beer Hunter's Old Buck (second release) made in Pori, offering some of the most intense and frankly gripping whisky I have tasted in a very long time, even managed to upstage the usual stunning malts from Mackmyra, showing that Scandinavia is a serious force to be reckoned with and may soon have to be regarded as a region in its own right."
-Jim Murray-



I hope in the future they have different
kinds of Old Buck available for whisky lovers...