Strawberry cream | Orange chocolate | Buttercream | Green tea | Toasted oak | Lovely intensity

Candied orange | Pear | Creme brulee | Ethanol

Ethanol | Layers of oak | Vanilla | Pomegranate

Back in 2019, Jordan and Nick both put Rare Perfection 15 Year Cask Strength on their favorites list. I was the odd man out because the whiskey just didn’t click with me. Nick recently reviewed the latest Rare Perfection 14 Year and gave it praise once again. With it being almost 5 years since our initial bottle and a whole lot of whiskey later, will this new batch of Rare Perfection 15 Year change my mind?

The whiskey’s nose is filled with classic bright fruity notes that I’ve come to appreciate over the years from Canadian whiskey. The nose is near-fantastic with its strawberry, orange, buttercream, and green tea scents. The palate holds onto some of this sugary sweetness, with ample candied orange, pear, and creme brulee. Yes it tastes as good as it sounds, but the whiskey's biggest flaw - and the one I noticed in the 2019 batch I had - is its ethanol creep. The ethanol comes out strong during the finish, but it starts to wiggle its way in during the palate. It, unfortunately, undoes a lot of what makes this whiskey fantastic. It's much too strong and dominates the whiskey in a detrimental way. The whiskey already has a thin body and adding water brings little benefit to quelling the heat. Like it was in 2019, Rare Perfection 15 Year Cask Strength is a very unique tasting whiskey. Not everyone will be affected by its ethanol like I am, which is why some people find a lot to love with it. I was wondering if revisiting Rare Perfection 15 Year in a new batch would change my opinion of it. While it hasn’t, I can still say much like my fellow comrades said in 2019, there’s nothing else that tastes just like it.

The bottle in review has a designation code of F-YF-3.