Ballantine's Finest Platinum

Ballantines Ballantine's Gold Seal 12 Year Old Special Reserve

My alphabetical order is a bit out of whack, but I'm going to try to (roughly) adhere to it as we go through these minis. This is a Ballantine's 12 Year Old, but the label is very different from the current bottling, with "Gold Seal" and "Special Reserve" on the label. And, again, we are at 43% rather than the current 40% ABV....

Score 87/100

Ballantines 17 Year Old

Okay, let me start by saying that this is quite old stuff. It was bottled in 1972 and is minimum 17 years old, so this golden auldie contains whisky distilled in the Fifties of last century. Liquid history, so to speak. They don't make 'm like this no more. Let us try it at once. The nose is quite expressive on all kinds of fruit, mostly citrus,...

Score 83/100

Ballantines 17 Year Old

This bottle has been opened for over 7 months. I bought it because I wanted a whisky to drink in the summer and it was highly rated, named whisky of the year by Jim Murray. Although many people didn't agree with him on this, but since it's affordable to me, I still gave it a try. At first I was rather disappointed because it was light and watery,...

Score 86/100

Ballantines Hard Fired

The Hard Fired expression from Ballantine’s was an Amazon exclusive and contains malt that matured on double charred casks, hence the name. That’s about all the info I could find, except for the fact that it was released in 2015. In a nutshell: this is their Finest Blend on double charred casks, end of story. But I do not believe this was a hit,...

Score 66/100