Thompson Bros Blind Bottle | 46.3% ABV
Score: 6/10
Good stuff.
TL;DR
Lovely, creamy, mineralic and completely elusive
Love is blind.
I’ve missed you.
It’s been very quiet around Dramface in the last few days. There was a mass-gathering, the first of its kind, that coincided with the celebrations around Glasgow’s Whisky Festival this year. Dramface Towers were left unstaffed. No one was at the wheel. But for me, it’s been longer. I’ve been elsewhere, distracted.
Life these past few months has been nothing short of a whirlwind. I’ve spent my time cycling around Paris with around ten bottles in my backpack cooler, trying to sell wine to restaurants and bottle shops. I’ve delved deeper into the French bureaucracy paperwork black hole than I ever wanted to. Most importantly, I vastly underestimated the number of hours I would have to spend on the phone planning meetings.
For those of you who don’t know, I changed jobs this year and my new boss is a mess. Which sucks, because I am my new boss. I’ve stepped further into the wine trade, creating my own business selling wine to professionals. It’s extremely challenging in many aspects: finances, mental health - I’m alright, don’t worry - and the little free time it leaves me.
Everything has been about wine since August. I spent the summer visiting different winemaking regions, barely managing to find time to do my duty as best man at one of my closest friend’s wedding. I’ve visited the Loire valley, Champagne, Bourgogne and Beaujolais. My dad, recently retired, joined me for some of these adventures. I then spent the months of September & October frantically trying to show my face to nearly everyone who sells wine in the Paris region. I’ve met a lot of people, some of them are fantastic, most are very nice. Some are not so.
I’ve managed to sell wine during the big demonstrations you might have heard about these past few weeks, while avoiding cops who could have claimed the bottles in my possession were ‘possible weapons’. To be fair, a French slang word for a bottle of wine is indeed ‘cannon’.
And so, these few months went by in a flash. I turned thirty in September, and it barely registered in my monkey brain. The days are just too short, and I don’t have time to stop.
I must admit, during this period, whisky has taken the backseat. Even though I did partake in a whisky club night, and attended Whisky Live Paris, as I do every year, it pains me to say the whisky flame only flickered a little.
Don’t get me wrong, I still love the stuff. It’s more of a case of not having the time, or not being in the right headspace. Even at Whisky Live I left before closing time, something I had never done before. To be fair, the line up of brands wasn’t as exciting this year - still great, but slightly less than previous years - due to the downturn the industry is facing. Still, I realised a few days ago - whisky has taken a backseat.
I was sitting in my living room after a long day of work, and I fancied a drink. I went to the kitchen and poured leftover wine that I used as a sample for work in the days before. Then I turned back towards the living room and saw my Ikea shelf filled with around a hundred bottles of whisky. It didn’t even occur to me that I could pour myself a little dram until this particular day.
That’s also when I realised I hadn’t written anything for Dramface in close to three months. Not even a few lines. No bottle selected for review. These past two years, until this summer, I always had something brewing for review. I usually only managed to get one review out each month, but as soon as I finished one, I was starting another. I even wrote a few long form features, which took me ages to finish.
But since May of this year, only one review. Nothing in the tank since July. Thankfully, we have an influx of wonderful new writers thanks to Wally’s tireless dedication to the project. They have been keeping you busy, so well in fact that you may not even have noticed that a few of us have made our presence on these pages rarer.
Whisky purchasing came to a halt as well. My last purchases date back to the Independent Spirits Festival back in March. Since then, I changed jobs, meaning a decrease in income, which doesn’t help, but honestly, I never had FOMO, and I didn’t even peruse the auction sites.
Recently though, I seem to have come back to it. It was a conscious effort at first, but the old habits are quickly coming back. The pouring of whisky yes, but also writing about it. I don’t ever want to stop writing for this website. I want Dramface to always be around. It’s cathartic and I need it. It also introduced me to some of the finest people I’ve ever met.
So here I am, putting in the effort to make sure I don’t ever stray too far away from it. If this wee project is to survive, everyone needs to give it care and attention. I’m not one to ask for money or support - that’s Wally’s role - so I’m just going to do my part: trying to write somewhat passable reviews, for fun, roughly once a month.
Review
Thompson Brothers Mystery Malt, Series 5, Single malt Scotch whisky, 46.3% ABV
£65 paid, mostly sold out
Fun is an important part of whisky. There is little room for snobbishness here but, more importantly, it’s fun that keeps us engaged. And the most fun thing to do with whisky is, in my humble opinion, to try it blind.
It puts both the whisky and the taster to the test. I love it. The problem is, I’m only good at it when nobody’s here to witness.
Which reminds me, I need to write about the aforementioned 2026 GWF weekend.
Score: 6/10
Good stuff.
TL;DR
Lovely, creamy, mineralic and completely elusive
Nose
Malty, clay, fresh. Unpeated it seems, which is always one of the first things I try to figure out in a blind tasting. Maybe, very subtly, lightly peated, but I’m not sure. Mineral, cooked wheat, briny. Feels highlandy, west coast. Maybe a Ben Nevis or an Ardnamurchan in a tired cask?
With water: Savoury. French fries, panko crumbs. Dragon fruit.
Palate
Feels quite in line with the nose. Mineral, malty, clean, again, maybe with a little bit of peat ? My mind’s probably playing me tricks… Creamy porridge, black pepper.
With water: a tad fruitier, but still quite salty and savoury.
The Dregs
This is a lovely dram! Its very clean profile makes it hard to pinpoint though. I’ll do as I always do: blind guess first, then a second guess after having looked at the list of possible whiskies. Here we go:
I would say Ardnamurchan, 8-10yo, probably unpeated. That’s what my gut tells me.
After a quick look at the list of possible culprits, I must say I’m nowhere closer to the answer. It could very well be Aultmore, Clynelish, Highland Park, Dalmore, Wolfburn or even Kingsbarns.
But there is an Ardnamurchan in the list, so I’m going to stick to my original guess.
Here’s what it really is:
Auchroisk 13yo, in dechar-rechar! I would never have guessed that blind. Auchroisk is such a sleeper distillery. I’ve tried a few but it’s the first bottle I own. I’ll happily see how it develops over time. I must say, this is not as much of a disaster as the first time I did this!
Once again the brothers do it. Whisky needs people like them; whisky needs ways to stay fun. If it stays fun, we’ll always find ways to come back to it.
You know me, there’s always a musical suggestion at the end of my reviews. This week, I would suggest a recent discovery for me : Keo, and their song Fly. It’s the nineties all over again, and I’m here for it.
Score: 6/10
Tried this? Share your thoughts in the comments below. AF
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