The eighteen year old, badged The Vintage, is the expression in which Dewar's confidence in its own method is most evident. Eighteen years is a long time for a blend, and longer still when one remembers that the whole is then married again in oak after the components have reached that age. The risk is obvious — over-oaked, tired, hollow in the middle — and the fact that The Vintage avoids all three is a credit to the blending bench.
The nose opens with honey, as one would expect, but the honey is darker now, closer to heather-comb than to clover; around it sit marmalade, dark chocolate, dried fig and well-aged oak of the polished-panelling variety. The palate is rich and rounded, honeyed malt at its heart, with orange peel, milk chocolate, raisin and a warm baking spice that keeps the sweetness honest.
The finish is long, warming and resinous in its closing moments, a faint cedar note lingering after the honey has faded. At 40% abv one might wish for a little more cut, but the house style has always favoured approachability, and The Vintage is not the bottle on which to break that tradition.
This is Aberfeldy-led blending at its most composed. It will not convert the single-malt purist, nor is it intended to; but it is a reminder that the blender's art, when practised with patience and an adequate stockhold, can produce whiskies of genuine dignity. The Vintage is one of them.
