The Balvenie 30 Year

This next review is the crown jewel of my whisky collection, The Balvenie 30 Year that my wife bought for me for my birthday 8 years ago when we were still dating.  She happened to give me this around the time I was hunting for her engagement ring, so to say that she is a master strategist would be an understatement.

I tend to only take a measured dram out of this once a year on special occasions (birthdays, anniversaries, etc.), but it has been a few years since I went back to it so this weekend I had a bit for my son’s birthday and decided to finally write a review.

While we do not know the exact mix of what is inside the bottle, we do know that everything is aged at least 30 years, at a minimum, with whisky aged in ex-bourbon barrels and ex-sherry casks.

ABV: 47.3%

How it smells….honeydew melon, strawberries, leather, musty old books (but not in a bad way!)

How it tastes…..Sweet berries at the start followed by pipe tobacco, earthy notes, leather and chocolate covered espresso beans at the end.  Finishes with toffee, some peppery spice and a bit more mild sweetness.

Price…..This was gifted to me from my wife, but it was around $900 (at the time)

Rating...🥃🥃🥃🥃🥃

Final thoughts..…So clearly my rating is going to be subjective on this as I have an emotional attachment to this particular bottle, but drinking whisky is an experience and every time I sip this I get taken back in time to 8 years ago when I first opened the box.  To say that this is very good would be another large understatement. The Balvenie 30 is a really interesting sip that took a bit to figure out. Since I have started doing these tastings, sometimes I sip one and I struggle to come up with something to say about it as it’s not very complex. When I say it’s not “complex” it can mean that either it’s a one or two note flavor profile or that there are no distinct stages in the tasting (start, middle, end, finish). The Balvenie 30 was the opposite, as there was a lot going on, through multiple stages, but the flavors were so nuanced it took a while to put words on what I was experiencing.  I also want to clarify the “musty old book” smell that I noted as it can sound off-putting, but it wasn’t and it really didn’t dawn on me until I started writing this post that it reminded me of a Brunello wine and the musty and earthy overtones that go with it. This is a different note than what I have traditionally experienced with The Balvenie whiskies, which tend to be more of the vanilla, honey, fruity, chocolates that come with the cask aging and finishes that they employ, but it was a delightful surprise.

You may ask, “Nice Sipper, I thought you do value ratings and this is a $900 bottle, how can you rate it a 5x?” and to that, I tip my hat to you for the question.  The new releases of this bottle are now selling for $2,000 so $900 is quite the value buy!  Is this really a value buy?  Not at all.  It is a prize to own and a prize to enjoy once in a while so it falls under the “this is amazing” portion of the 5x definition. It is a very complex and nuanced whisky with decades of layers, masterly crafted by The Balvenie.