Bushido had written some time back that Lismore was probably a young Glen Rothes. So in Florida there was one at Albertsons (the mega-grocery store) and I picked it up ($21 including all tax). This Lismore says it is 5 years old, and I've never had a smoother, richer 5-year-old that's for sure.
I'm tasting it along side a Signatory Un-chill-filtered 13-year-old (sherry butt) and I'm trying to come up with reasons why the $45 whisky is better than the $21 whisky and I am having a hard time. The Lismore has a touch of ripe sweet cherry on a new-dresser-drawer woody frame and is fabulously drinkable. That touch of robust fruit on a long, tasty backing is just great. Even when I add water to the Signatory Glen Rothes to cut the 46% closer to the 40% of the Lismore the Signatory is still too plainly sherry-embossed. I had picked up three Signatory UCF's in mid-October, and this Glen Rothes was the most disappointing of the three (the Highland Park is full of HP character on an especially clean frame; the Ardmore I haven't opened but the one I got last Spring I adored). The Glen Rothes disappointed because the sherry was too strong and there was not enough else going on. The Glen Rothes UCF has an assertive sherry bite, and a nice sherry drift from there--it is a drippingly nice whisky in some ways, but too spirity in others, and I think almost any lightly structured whisky treated with this kind of sherry would taste the same. The Lismore, on the other hand, probably has a bit of bourbon shaping it, and is more of a complete experience. It an immediately appreciable and attractive balance of pointedly ripe fruit and slow-creaking woodiness, and it is a great value.