Glenmorangie 12y Quinta Ruban with Dan

There’s only so much you can write about one scotch distiller and I feel like I’ve covered anything worth mentioning in the last two posts, so instead I thought I’d write about what Quinta Ruban is.

According to Google, it’s this scotch expression aged in port casks.  Wahwah.  So, okay, that’s kind of predictable.  I was thinking it might be more in line with the Beyond the Pale aged beers where it’s possible to go out and taste the goods of the originating cask.  Not so in this case, as various Google Fu techniques reveal no indication of any specific port used in its creation beyond “finest Ruby port”. Ruby port is the most common form of port.

I studied linguistics in university (the few times I was there) so I wanted to know what the name Quinta Ruban is supposed to mean.  Figuring port casks = Portuguese? I checked some translators and got this:

Quinta: n. estate, villa; farm, farmstead; quint
adj. quintan, (about attacks of disease) recurring every fifth day
v. divide by five

Ruban: doesn’t mean anything in Portuguese.  Huh, okay.  But in French,

Ruban: n. m (plural rubans) band, stripe, ribbon.

Quinta: doesn’t mean anything in French.  Annoying.  Alright, maybe Spanish, then.

Nope.  In Spanish, they mean the same thing as in Portuguese. House/fifth/five and nothing. So I guess it’s supposed to mean House Ribbon or Fifth Ribbon or something, as translated by some marketing company that doesn’t speak any of the languages.

Enough comparative linguistics, here’s what we thought:

smell
dan – caramel, port, peat
simon – darker wood, a little smoke

neat
dan – syrupy, doesn’t linger on the tongue, licorice
simon – port very evident, slightly odd aftertaste, anise

splash
dan – astringent. Don’t splash this scotch. anesthetic.
simon – very chemical. Don’t splash.

Glenmorangie 12y Quinta Ruban – 46% 750ml – $82.75 – Highlands

Try it? No.  Buy it? No.