1/A friend handed me a glass at his kitchen bench, no label in sight, and asked me to guess. I couldn't place it against anything else I'd poured that night. That's Oban 14: it stands a little apart from the bottles sitting near it, and tastes like almost none of them.
2/Pour it slow and the nose comes up floral and honeyed, toffee and cereal, a wisp of smoke, a breath of the sea. The palate is rich and busy: citrus, more cereal, seaweed, peat, oak. The finish runs long, toffee and new leather, spice that won't quit.
3/Ask the drinkers of the bottles nearest Oban 14 what it's worth to them, each starting from what they pay for their own, and the answers run from $80 to $130. At $165 it sits above all of them. It's priced for its fans.
4/This week at Dan Murphy's it's $165. That works out to about 24 pours in the bottle, close to $6.95 a nip — what a glass costs you at your own bench. Set beside the bottles near it, it sits higher, and makes no secret of it.
5/So who's it for? If you already love this maritime, spice-and-honey style, the price won't surprise you — this is your bottle. If you're newer to it, pour a measure before you commit. Either way, few drams near it taste quite like this one.
None recorded.
None recorded.
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