Back in the early days of the blog—back when I had more energy and was known for being a thorn in the side of not food writers but the whisky industry and its many amateur apologists and spokespersons—one of the pet mythologies of the whisky enthusiast community that I often took issue with was the belief in magic vintages at particular distilleries. Indeed, one of my earliest reviews featured Caperdonich, which is one of the distilleries around which a lot of the magic vintage talk used to center (do people still go on about this kind of thing?). 1972 was the year about which people were most apt to wax rhapsodic. I never tired of pointing out—as I did in that first Caperdonich review—that what was almost certainly happening was that for entirely random reasons more casks of 1972 Caperdonich had survived to be bottled in the 2000s than of other years in the 1970s. I guess I just did it again. Anyway, I have for you today another Caperdonich 1972. This one was also bottled by Duncan Taylor—who bottled so many of those fruity Caperdonichs that made the dead distillery’s reputation—but not for one of their premier lines. The Lonach releases typically featured low bottling strengths and were not single casks. Quite likely these were vattings that had been used to rescue casks that had fallen below the minimum required strength of 40%. Many of these whiskies were very good anyway. Let’s see what this one is like.

Caperdonich 36, 1972 (43.2%; Lonach; from my own bottle)

Nose: A lovely aroma of tinned fruit (pineapple, peach) along with the tin. On the second sniff there’s more acid in there (lemon, a bit of lime peel) and more oak. Continues in this vein. With a couple of drops of water there’s just a bit of pastry crust.

Palate: As on the nose but a little thinner. Still, there’s more depth than I expected at the strength and more bite as well. Gets a bit richer as it goes and there’s more of the citrus here as well (candied lemon peel) along with polished oak. As often happens with older, lower-strength malts, water actually seems to improve the texture; nothing new emerges, however.

Finish: Medium. The fruit fades quickly but the oak lingers. With time the lemon peel lingers for quite a bit longer. As on the palate with water.

Comments: These notes were taken from the third pour from the bottle. The first two had come across much thinner on the nose and especially on the palate. This gives me hope that it may get richer still with some air in the bottle. I’ll report on developments either way. It’s still very good though if missing the over-the-top fruit and development of the best old Caperdonichs.

Rating: 87 points.