Let’s close out SMWS Ardmore 23, 1997 week by going back a bit in their sequence. I began on Monday with cask 66.198, and continued on Tuesday with cask 66.199. Here now is cask 66.195. It too received a long finish/double maturation. But unlike 66.198 (French oak) and 66.199 (HTMC bourbon cask), this one went into a first-fill ex-oloroso cask (another barrique) for the last two years of maturation. Well, I really liked 66.197, which also spent its last two years in oloroso wood (though refill in that case). Will this one—which the SMWS named “If These Walls Could Talk”—be as good? Let’s see.

Ardmore 23, 1997 (48.7%; SMWS 66.195; 1st-fill ex-oloroso barrique; from a bottle split)

Nose: A little flat—there’s some leafy sherry and some damp oak; some sweeter fruit and some dried orange peel peep in from behind but don’t make much of an impression. Not much smoke to be found either. As it sits there’s a fair bit of citronella and the sweeter fruit does emerge (over-ripe plum, apricot jam). A few drops of water and…it sort of goes back to how it started.

Palate: Comes in with a mix of spicy oak, sweet orange peel, brown sugar and mild woodsmoke. Good drinking strength; decent texture. More citrus on the second sip. Continues in this general vein with no real development. With a lot more time the spicy notes expand. With water it’s less sweet—there’s more of the leafy notes from the nose and more of the spicy oak.

Finish: Long. The spicy oak and the orange peel are dominant here; gets first sweeter and then finally spicier as it goes. As on the palate with water.

Comments: A pleasant whisky that doesn’t really have much to recommend it beyond that. Whatever the reason for the rescue operation was, the first-fill barrique has rendered this quite drinkable if fairly anonymous.

Rating: 85 points.