Tonight is Halloween, fellas – the scariest and most awesome time of the year! To celebrate my favorite holiday in style, I walked over to my cabinet o’ poisons and picked a special sip from it, namely a 22-year-old Auchentoshan… or shall I rather say… Shock’em’toshan bottled by Glasgow’s greatest ghouls, Douglas Fang & Co., for this very occasion. The spirit inside seeped out of the stills on October 31, 1996. From there, it went straight into a refill hogshead, where it slept for more than two decades. And the cask worked wonders, producing a weighty and well-proportioned whisky with a downright dangerous drinkability. Fittingly, the pour’s packaging is genius, too. It comes in a wooden box with black metal fittings and the bottle has a black wax sealing. The old-styled label brims with atmospheric details. The key message “Distilled 31st October 1996” is surrounded by pumpkins, spiders, snakes, skulls and toads as well as black ravens and poison-filled flagons. As a total Halloween fan, my verdict is as clear as the water in Camp Crystal Lake: this luridly lovable Lowlander is the ultimate whisky to drink on the fateful night of All Hallow’s Eve!

by Tobi

Eye: Fullmoon yellow with gooey legs crawling down the glass’s insides.
Nose: This Halloween basket for grown-ups is filled with a whole lotta awesome goodies: soft toffee, juicy oranges, caramelized hazelnuts, lemon-y gummy bears and vanilla muffins with citrus icing. The scent emerging from it is full, thick, heavy and as alluring as a love spell from a transcendental temptress.
Palate: Beware, ye wretched witchies and vicious warlocks. This sumptuos spectre from the Lowlands was trapped in a very active refill hoggie for 23 long years. The whizzy wood placed many mouthwatering notes in the full-bodied liquid: candy apples, pan cakes, salted caramel, vanilla pudding, orange juice and white chocolate filled with apricot cream. Just for the sake of it, I would have loved to mention pumpkin pie as well, but I did not quite find it in there. So gory… erm… sorry.
Finish: While running down the throat, the first Halloween bottling from Douglas Fang’s renowned Old Scar-ticular series develops a bewitching sweetness. Its final offerings include cocoa powedr, breakfast cereals, sugar cubes, buttered popcorn and chocolate-coated pineapple slices.

Type: Single Malt Scotch Whisky
Region: Scotland (Lowlands)
Age: 22 Years
Vintage: 1996
Cask: Refill Hogshead
No. of bottles: 188
Alc. volume: 55.4 per cent
Bottle size: 0.7 litres
Price range: ~125.00 Euro
More info: http://www.douglaslaing.com/ (Bottler) ; http://www.bremerspirituosencontor.de/ (Importer)