Imperial 15 Years Old 1995 Cask #3525 (Creative Whisky Company)

Imperial closed in 1998 after a century of sporadic production and was taken down in 2013 to make way for Dalmunach, so its whisky now comes only from a closed distillery. This single cask was filled in 1995 and bottled by Creative Whisky Company at 15 years old, for its The Exclusive Malts range. Single cask number 3525 yielded 262 bottles, released for the Netherlands.

Imperial ran four large copper pot stills at Carron and made a fruity Speyside spirit that mostly went into blends such as Teacher's and Ballantine's. This bottling matured in an ex-Oloroso sherry butt. Across 15 years, Oloroso is a fully oxidised sherry, so the wood entered the cask loaded with polyphenols and melanoidins, the latter reading as fig and raisin.

Bottled at its natural cask strength of 50.3%, without dilution, the ex-Oloroso wood gives dried fruit and a walnut dryness drawn from its tannins, with a leather and cocoa edge from slow oxidation. Imperial's esters persist underneath as stewed orchard fruit, into a dry, nutty finish.