| Rating | 24.7/40 |
| Origin | Scotland, Central Speyside |
| Distillery | Macallan |
| Owner | William Grant & Sons via Edrington Group |
| Series | Double Cask |
| Edition | Lunar New Year 2020 Pack |
| Style | Single Malt |
| Cask | Oloroso seasoned American and European oak casks |
| Bottled | 2019 |
| Strength | 40% (80 Proof) |
| Whiskybase | Whiskybase |
| Wine Searcher | Wine Searcher |
One of Macallan’s slightly gimmicky Lunar New Year releases, this one for 2020, the year of the rat. To be honest the packaging is perhaps slightly more impressive than the whisky itself. It’s certainly quite nice but neither demands nor requires attention. A pleasant dram for distracted enjoyment at a reasonable price, at least compared to the usual Macallan price range.
Nose: A wooden bowl of creamy orange yogurt with some honey drizzled on top. Later it begins to dissolve and fragment and ends up shifting towards paint thinner flavored candy. Pleasant but with a slight impulse to try and turn less so. (6.2/10)
Palate: Quite nice. It puffs itself up to a decent volume filled with those orange notes from the nose minus the creamy yogurt and, luckily, the paint thinner candy. After a few sips some bitter elements begin to dominate things but, again, not to an extent that really throws a wrench in the flavor works. (6.2/10)
Finish: Decent heat, decent volume, decent flavor, decent length. Just not spectacular or particularly noteworthy. Slight to the better side of average. I do like the surprising amount of warmth it manages to develop near the solar plexus given it clocks in at basic bottle strength. (6.1/10)
Balance: This is nice? But if I’ve ever met a whisky that really doesn’t require attention it’s this one. Perfect for distracting social settings and yet that thought makes me feel like it’s a whisky wasted. (6.2/10)
