Glenlivet 16 Year Old Nadurra, 53% (Batch 0911P)

The Glenlivet Nadurra, particularly the early batches, gets a lot love from whisky geeks. While I've not had too many different examples, those I have tried I have enjoyed. It's about 100 bucks here in Australia, so while that doesn't make it quite the bargain it seems to be in the US and Europe, if you get a good batch it would still seem to be money well spent.

I picked this 2011 iteration up relatively recently - late last year - from a major booze chain store where it was collecting dust on the shelf along with some other, more recent, bottlings. Serge has since quite enjoyed this particular batch, so I thought it might be time to have a look myself.

This review is from the very first pour of the bottle.

Glenlivet 16 Year Old Nadurra, 53% (Batch #0911P)

Nose: Something green and pickled gherkin-like (reminiscent, to me, of notes I found distractingly all through the Redbreast 12 CS) leaps out at you at first. Pretty boozy and sweet too. The greenness fades a little given some time, and some nutty malt comes to the fore.
Water draws out some stonefruit and tempers the greenness and booze a touch. It also tones down some of the overt sweetness a little, morphing into something like sweet soy sauce.

Palate: Hot, textural, with thick honey sweetness first up. After a little time in the glass, some fruit emerges - ripe stonefruit and maybe even some mango - layered over some nice clean malt.
Water makes it less fiery, while releasing more of that tropical fruit that time in the glass gave us .

Finish: Quite long. Warm and luscious, with some spiciness - and a little astringency - developing and lingering on the tail, once the fruit fades.
Water thins out the texture somewhat but, for me, increases the drinking pleasure. The numbing spice on the tail remains, and perhaps even lingers a touch longer.

A really nice Glenlivet that I think was vastly improved with the addition of water, which sees some lovely fruity notes finally taming that initial overt greenness. It will be interesting to see what happens to those green notes as the bottle empties.