Taste: Marks and Spencer Speyside 12 year old

We've reached the end of our regional tour of Marks and Spencer's 12 year malts. Kicking off with the Highland edition, followed by Islay, we're now in the heartland of Scottish whisky which can only mean Speyside.

I had reasonable hopes for this given the huge range of whiskies available from the region, surely picking something out that was reasonable wouldn't be too much of an ask. After all, Speyside offers a wonderful variety of malts with distinctive characteristics that support many of the major blends in the marketplace. 

Time for the actual tasting of this Speyside offering:

Colour: gold bullion

Nose: a very shy nose, lacking huge depth and characteristics.  Citrus is dominant with pineapples, peaches and lemon. Speyside in its nature but compare this to the Craigellachie Berlin edition I tasted recently and it is night and day. 

Taste: An initial burst of sunshine and then the clouds appear and you're left with a tiny lingering finish of satsuma. In the mouth there is a woody note

No need to add water to this single malt which comes across as very fragile. Of the trio this is the most disappointing and for a 12 year Speyside I was expecting more character in the glass. Served at 40% this has been watered down with detrimental consequences and that's a real shame for any whisky.