Edradour 10yo PX Small Batch
200th Anniversary Release | 46% ABV
Score: 7/10
Very Good Indeed.
TL;DR
Tasty enough to turn haters into lovers
Palate fatigue. It’s a thing.
At the end of 2025, I decided I should switch my whisky buying habits up a bit. Just for the fun of it.
After a year of diving headfirst into an ex-bourbon cask wormhole, I felt that I shouldn’t zoom in too much. I knew from listening to those more experienced than me - of which there are many - that palate stagnation and indifference is a real thing. You have to keep things varied and fresh.
I knew it to be true, because when I developed a taste for heavily peated whiskies they were all I wanted to drink for a while. Until I didn’t, because I found out that usually, after a week of exploring peated drams, my nose tends to cancel the peat out to such an extent that someone poured me an Ardbeg 10 blind and I thought it was a Glen Elgin (stop laughing - like I said it’s a real thing).
Initially I thought the whisky could have gone off or that I just wasn’t feeling it that day, but looking back, I now realise it was peat blindness. It’s quite a downer to come to terms with really. If I didn’t have to take breaks of several weeks before coming back to peated whiskies and be able to appreciate them properly, I’m sure they would represent a much bigger chunk of my collection.
And so the buying of ex-bourbon matured whisky came to a halt. And I had an idea.
It’s often said that if you’re not into a particular maturation or distillery style, it just means you haven’t found the right one for your palate yet. And that one day someone will pour something for you that you would otherwise steer clear of, convinced that you won’t like it. And you’ll find yourself enjoying it.
My plan was as follows: instead of waiting for that day to come around, I would go and actively seek these expressions out. A potentially risky business of course. I might end up with a nearly full bottle I do not want to drink. And I would have put down my hard-earned money to obtain it.
So I stepped aboard H.M.S. Careful, set sail, and stood on the deck with my binoculars, scanning the horizon. I needed a little bit of strategy.
I decided that my first foray into the murky waters of flavours unloved would have to be Pedro Ximénez (PX) Sherry casks. This style of Sherry is much more divisive than, say, Oloroso Sherry, and it’s a bit of a Marmite thing. You either love it or you don’t. It characterises itself by super sweet, raisiny dominance over most distillates matured in its oaky confinements.
I’ve had only one PX Sherry experience that was to my taste, namely this peated Millstone. Other drams have not been as enjoyable to me, to say the least. Most notably the Lagavulin Distiller’s Edition 2022, which was a super sweet, two-dimensional, watered down shadow of what was probably once a decent whisky. Best not to dwell on whatever Diageo is doing to The Prince of Islay these days. I tend to avoid PX Sherry when possible, because it’s just so overpowering and sweet. I’d rather just buy a bottle of Sherry if that’s what I was going for.
But I was on a mission now. Off I went to find a distillate that could maybe handle the characteristics. It would probably have to be beefy. Weighty. Robust. With a big personality that could stand up to the PX. And it would have to come from a producer whom I knew to have a good track record of releasing sherry cask-matured whiskies.
Enter the might of Edradour Distillery and Andrew Symington. Placed firmly onto my radar in 2025 due to their decision to present their core range bottling at 46% ABV and un-chill filtered (it had always been natural colour). And due to the success of, and my positive experiences with, their great value Signatory Vintage 100º Proof Series, I had been keeping my eyes on their offerings when browsing the virtual shelves. And that’s when this popped up.
Review
Edradour 10yo, PX Small Batch for their 200th anniversary, vintage 2015, full PX maturation, 46% ABV
£50/€57 paid, still some availability
It seemed to check all the necessary boxes. 10yo Edradour, full maturation in PX Sherry casks, fully natural presentation. One of the small batch releases to celebrate their 200th Anniversary, and best of all: seemingly great value for its specs at the equivalent of £50. I quickly decided it was worth a punt.
Visual on target, locked and loaded, risk calculated, fingers crossed, slightly hesitant… Bang!
Bullseye.
Score: 7/10
Very Good Indeed.
TL;DR
Tasty enough to turn haters into lovers
Nose
Blackcurrants. Jammy cranberry purée. Sweet tobacco. Fruity toffee caramel sweets. Cough syrup. Raspberry. Warm forest fruit sauce to pour over ice cream. A full bodied Appassimento red wine.
Palate
Very sweet wave of PX sherry. Jammie again! Home-made cherry and forest fruit jam. It’s blackcurrants, strawberry, stewed prunes, and raisins galore. The kind of chocolate bonbons with alcoholic cherry creaminess inside. There are baking spices here, but they take a while to break through the fruit salad barricade. There’s that suggestion of Appassimento wine again. The finish is slightly drying. High cocoa content chocolate acerbity. It takes water well, and after a while that softens the experience a bit. Dilute to your own preference; it’ll play along nicely.
The Dregs
This is a very well executed whisky. It turns out that if the casks are good and the distillate is robust and hefty enough to stand up to them instead of getting devoured by them, PX casks might be my thing after all. And this isn’t even a gentle finish; it’s full maturation for 10 years.
I’m sure you can tell by now that I like it. This whisky, with its style that I actively avoided for the longest time, has won me over completely. It’s going down quicker than most bottles at the moment, and that tells me all I need to know.
I’m genuinely surprised by how much I’m enjoying it. It’s very good indeed. A well-deserved 7/10.
Meanwhile the fun of trying to pinpoint something that I shouldn’t like… is something I like, and it goes on. Next up: wine casks.
Wish me luck.
Score: 7/10
Tried this? Share your thoughts in the comments below. MM
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