Mini SBT from Oshima-san

A regular Mini SBT session with my malt friend Oshima-san, where blind samples arrive periodically. I'm grateful to have the chance to try this. (Contents below are based on blind tasting) ・Mini SBT from Oshima-san Aroma has a light maltiness, white wine, slightly plant-like notes reminiscent of well water, fresh citrus, muscat, and a touch of cheese/acidic elements. While fresh, it lacks the sharpness of youth. When drinking, it starts smooth but gradually expands with umami that lingers on the tongue—grapefruit pulp, white grape, faint peat, and a concentrated, slightly powdery umami. 【Very Good】 The white grape-like quality and citrusy fruitiness are present, yet no youthful immaturity is detected. The impression was the pleasant fruity concentration and umami that lingers on the tongue, making it very delicious. The texture suggests a reasonable age since bottling, with pleasant fruitiness but not overwhelming maturity—making me think it might be an official short-aged old bottle. Based on this concentrated fruity character, I considered the prediction. The cheese and faint peat notes led me to Springbank as my first guess, with GlenDronach's Dumpy bottling as the second. ・Predictions: 1. Springbank 2. GlenDronach 3. Glenrothes Other considerations included Longmorn and Glenglassa. While the peat wasn't strong, the fruitiness was close to that of Lagavulin. With this tasting and prediction, I sent my response email. The correct answer was... Banff BANFF 1975-2007 31yo Signatory Vintage #3339 43.7% This was a Signatory Banff from 1975, aged 31 years. Upon hearing this, I thought of having tasted similar fruity Banff bottles before. Oshima-san, the questioner, apparently had a particular fondness for this fruity character of the 1975 Banff and had been keeping an eye out to purchase it. Indeed, this fruity quality was also a favorite of mine. It's very fruity and could reasonably be considered long-aged, but short-aged watered-down bottles often exhibit such fruitiness. With the sharpness of short-aging completely smoothed out into roundness, it's often a challenge to distinguish between long-aged and short-aged bottles. In particular, the old short-aged bottlings of Springbank or GlenDronach that I included in my predictions display an extremely alluring front-facing fruitiness, making it hard to believe they weren't blended with a significant amount of long-aged stock. I'm curious about what aging process would produce such flavors. Consciously differentiating between long-aged bottles and watered-down short-aged ones in fruity old bottlings will likely become a future challenge. Thank you, Oshima-san, for this delicious and thought-provoking question.