Cadenhead’s Tomatin 13yo
Warehouse Tasting Bottling | 55.7% ABV
Score: 7/10
Very Good Indeed.
TL;DR
A fascinating whisky of shifting flavours
Cheese Dreams. Whisky Nightmares?
The Queen died yesterday.
The news travelled through the airwaves around 7pm and my wife announced it as we cleaned out our 7-year-old daughter’s pet cage — we have two wee furry pals called Victoria and Elizabeth and all they cared about, at that poignant moment not just in recent history, but in the near-century of history over which Queen Elizabeth II presided, was getting a treat from the packet. Insensitive.
We are not royalists, monarchists or superfans of the Royal Family by any stretch — my daughter named her pets just after she’d completed a module in her primary 3 class on The Royal Family — but we did care that a lady who devoted her entire adult life to serving the British institutions of poise, stoicism and elegance had whispered her final farewell. Anyone passing to the next place is a sad event, but Her Majesty lived a life in the public eye, under intense scrutiny from the British public, and the world's public too. A tough gig.
As the evening progressed, we chatted about her legacy and what sort of things will change, now that we have a King atop the throne — coins, stamps, cash, anthems and more besides — and what it will mean, generally, for the monarchy going forward. Then my wife cut loose as Roy took to the screen in Texas for his remote vPub, and I poured another whisky. When I turned in after the quiz, I managed a couple of pages of the book I’m reading — Stephen King’s Wolves of the Calla — and I was out like a light. But I would, on that evening of particular significance, endure the first genuine nightmare I’ve had in a long time.
Becoming a parent is a stressful thing for obvious reasons, but my stress has manifested itself for the first few years of my wee girl’s life through the medium of nightmares — very specific nightmares that encapsulate the overall fear of what being a parent is, namely, responsibility. The responsibility of caring for them, of making sure they don’t die, of keeping them safe, of being there for them as they work out just what the flippin’ hell this thing called “life” is all about...
Mostly, my nightmares circled around the theme of me losing her in shops or in parks — there one minute and gone the next. I would wake up at the precise moment I realised she was gone and have to go and check in her bedroom to make sure she was still there. Awful, but short and sweet! Back to sleep I’d go, reassured that was a nightmare most new parents would undoubtedly have too. Then the nightmares stopped, probably around the time she started exhibiting the ability to stay by my side in shops without me holding her hand, instead gripping onto my pocket or bag tail as I wrestled with shopping at the checkout. As she gets older, more aware of her environment and more self-sufficient, the fear of her inadvertently, innocently wandering off reduces accordingly.
Last night was the first time that I travelled into the dreamworld to find a more potent, visceral form of my deepest fear waiting for me. It started with, as usual, a supermarket. She was there all the way around, but at the point of me concluding checkout (self-service, obvs — this is a modern nightmare), I turned to see she was gone. Ensuing panic, frantic running outside to see if she’d left the store, shouting her name, turning every which way, asking others to help and getting no response, rising anger and despair. The stress kept ramping up, more and more until I was at peak desolation — she was gone.
But I didn’t wake up. Instead, my journey continued further: searching around the carpark and the nearby gardens, watching the police arriving, more searching, and reluctantly returning home to my wife to explain that our daughter was gone. The subsequent investigation, social media frenzy, televised press conferences and my pleading to the world to bring her home, all played out in horrible technicolour clarity.
And then it happened — the vision that would haunt me for the whole of the following waking day. Upon reviewing the security camera tape of the entrance to the store, it was revealed that she hadn’t left the store at all, or been taken — at least not initially — anyway. Instead, she had disappeared up the magazine aisle at first. I’d panicked when she wasn’t where I’d last seen her; she’d looked around to see me run out the store and followed but, owing to us teaching her never leave the shop without us, stopped at the doorway.
There, the security camera captured in grainy clarity her little face searching, her little body standing, looking back into the supermarket as shoppers ignored her. She sat. She stood. She looked around for me, who wasn’t there. And then, after what seemed like hours of watching this footage in the dream, she was gone. An empty frame. I had abandoned her. I had left her to the wolves, left her vulnerable by virtue of my inability to keep a calm mind, and she was taken because I wasn’t there to protect her.
The brutality of it all was that, had I not panicked and instead remained at the till, she would have returned to me seconds later: it was there on the video to see. Had I turned around to look at the store immediately after running out, she’d have been sitting there cross-legged on the floor — it was on the video to see. She was right there all along, within arms reach, yet I kept moving further and further away from her.
“Unfortunately for Tomatin, the blame for my nightmare is being laid squarely at their feet.”
I awoke, sitting bolt upright and issuing a hoarse bark. My wife didn’t wake, only stirred. I was sweating, my heart was racing, and my mouth was dry as a bone; I could feel my pulse throbbing behind my eyes. I tiptoed through to my daughter’s room to see that she was sleeping soundly, the tinkle of her music player in the background: she was safe. I touched her to make sure it was real — a soft little arm, warm and still.
Getting back into bed, I started to drift off, but the image of her sitting alone at the shop doorway prevented me from falling back into slumber. I started to complete the story in my mind’s eye — the abductor calling and saying she was safe but demanding something silly for her safe return, the police zoning in on the caller’s location, her emotional return to me and my subsequent lifelong guilt — it was all a way to try and rationalise, and put to rest, what had been the most visceral and upsetting nightmare I’ve had as a parent. Finally, mercifully, I fell asleep.
So whisky, eh…?
Review
Cadenhead’s Warehouse Tasting 2009, fresh bourbon barrel since 2020, 55.7% ABV
£41 at auction (£46.50 inc. fees), only available from Cadenhead’s of Campbeltown
I don’t know what to make of the nightmare, or why it happened. It might have been in response to the changing of the guard and the closing of a chapter which we’ve all featured in. We’ve only ever known of a Queen, and now we have a King. My daughter asked what that meant, and she might have flicked me a look of uncertainty that was enough to register in my mind as her being worried about it.
It might also have been in response to the whisky I drank whilst watching Roy in Texas: a Compass Box Oak Cross to start (bold oaky deliciousness), followed by a Signatory Linkwood 2006 (see review), followed by this whisky now under review. Unfortunately for Tomatin, the blame for my nightmare is being laid squarely at their feet.
Nose
Sweet, perfumed. A bit of light agriculture — fields on the wind. Vanilla cream laced with tomatoes. A metallic something. Ragu before the lasagne is assembled. Spices: cardamom pod, maybe even a basil leaf in there somewhere. Swishing the glass makes it sweet. Let it sit and those tomato metallic notes appear. Very interesting.
Palate
Very grassy and hay-like. Vegetal - big vegetable feels. Savoury but not cheesy - I think oak and barley, salty porridge. Pasta sheets. Sweet pasta. Earthy and dusty. But then, a burst of chocolate! Fruit sweeties.
The Dregs
When I returned from Campbeltown after our magnificent sailing trip, I arrived home with two bottles from the five expressions that were on offer during our Warehouse Tasting Tour: a Ben Nevis finished in a Manzanilla sherry cask, and a Caol Ila. I then went on to purchase “An Orkney'' and this Tomatin from auction, both bottles which also featured in our line-up. I fancied the remaining Cameronbridge 31yo grain whisky too, but budget stopped me. I managed to get the auction bottlings for under what I would've paid in Campbeltown, which makes me both happy and a bit miffed — why buy the whisky from the wee shop in C’Town, available only if you've participated in the tour, knowing that you’re going to wave goodbye to those nice people who’ve made sure you had a great time and sell them in auction shortly thereafter? I’m glad I lost you money, and I’m glad I opened the whisky and enjoyed it, and you didn’t. Serves you bloody well right.
It’s surprising how a whisky can have a nose that's light and sweet, then develop into a red sauce for lasagne, then become chocolate-sweet again. To have a taste so savoury…but sweet too. Unfortunately for us, Cadenhead’s don’t detail the full cask lineage on their Warehouse Tasting labels — here it’s showing only as being finished in a fresh bourbon barrel since 2020. Given that it’s a 13-year-old whisky distilled in 2009 and assuming it was bottled in 2022, that means it spent 11 years in a mystery cask and 2 years in a fresh bourbon barrel. I get the vanilla and oak flavours that have come from the fresh bourbon, but where’s the vegetal stuff coming from? Did they sample the cask at 11 years and think, “Jeez, that’s a bit of a wild one,” and decant it into something to try and boost the sweetness and perhaps round off the harshness? All interesting questions.
The last Tomatin I experienced was the first I’d tried from the distillery - a hand-fill sample from Dallas which gave me a nose of biryani curry, garlic and turmeric and the taste of cherry tiffin and raw honey. Delicious stuff — now that I’ve tasted this expression from Cadenhead’s extensively, I can’t help but think that Tomatin must be an overtly savoury distillate. Is that the case? I’d be interested to know your experiences of Tomatin in the comments below
For now, I will assume that it is the case and consider if I want to continue exploring their whisky. I loved the cherry tiffin sweetness of the hand-fill and found the nose fantastic, but this expression of Tomatin is a bit more fieldy, a bit more planty and I’m not sure if I’m fully on board yet. But a further sample, knowing what to expect, and it's even more enjoyable — I'm investigating, seeking out more things that I can try and put a name to. It's fun! It's certainly masking the terror of the night before.
Either way, this Tomatin was the last thing that passed my lips before my altercation in the realm of the nightmare. This memory anchor (see my SPEY review) has been logged as an unsettling, vicious reminder of the responsibilities a parent holds and the perpetual looming presence of fear — for the kids’ safety and for the world we’ve brought them into — that hangs around our necks. This is a strange one; I’m sorry for Tomatin to be lumbered with my issues, but every time I reach for this bottle henceforth, I’ll think of that nightmare.
This whisky, however, has not been a nightmare, and I’ve scored it as such, but I can only ever refer to this bottle now as my nightmare whisky — dare I taste it again? Do I risk opening the door to the theatre of terror, allowing my greatest fear to escape, running rampage inside my troubled dreams once more?
The inescapable draw of the flavour chase lures me back in.
Score: 7/10
[I get those nightmares too — it was probably the vPub, or Stephen King, but probably the vPub. WMc / Ed.]
Tried this? Share your thoughts in the comments below. DC
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