Islay

Terroir: Tasting the Port Charlotte/Octomore Islay Barley

Sean Handley Islay , ,

I was wandering around the local Booths the other day, and what should I see on the shelves but the Islay Barley releases of Port Charlotte and Octomore! In a bloody supermarket, no less. Well played, Booths, well-played.

Screen Shot 2015-02-20 at 08.34.59

And, as if I need any more excuse to taste a pair of whiskies from those progressive folks on the shores of Loch Indaal…

Terroir

Bruichladdich have made a big deal of “terroir” for a number of years, and have already had several Islay barley releases of their unpeated spirit on the market for some time. There’s already a Scottish Barley release for Port Charlotte and Octomore, but now we finally have versions of each using only barley grown on Islay itself.

Terroir is a French word with no direct English translation. Essentially, it means “from the earth” and describes the unique character that a place imparts on a wine, a cheese, a whisky, or any other organic creation.

The now retired Duncan McGillivray “in the field”

The Port Charlotte is a vatting of spirit produced with barley from several farms on the island; the Octomore is the ultimate expression in terroir, having been grown in a single field (“Lorgba”, if you must know) on Farmer James Brown’s farm, Octomore (after which the whisky itself is named).

At this point, I have to mention that in-spite of being made with 100% Islay barley that was mashed, distilled, matured and bottled on Islay – the barley did make a brief trip to the mainland to be malted and smoked. I expected it to have been done at the Port Ellen maltings, but apparently not. So, the accolade for the whisky that’s 100% made (from seed to bottle) on Islay still sits with Kilchoman for their 100% Islay bottlings.

Oh well, as I’m sure NASA like to remind people: being first isn’t everything. I’m pretty sure nobody else has ever released a whisky that can trace its origins back to a single field!

Port Charlotte Islay Barley

Distillery: Bruichladdich
Bottled: 2014, Distilled: 2008
ABV: 50%
More Info: WhiskyBase

This is a 6-year-old Port Charlotte, though it’s not officially age-statemented on the bottle.

Like other distilleries of late, the marketing department seeks to make the packaging as attractive to new drinkers as possible so the age isn’t in evidence (perceived as a bit alienating and old-man-ish). Bruichladdich are usually very forthcoming on the details for their whiskies*, though, so there’s no secret about when it was distilled or when it was bottled – you just have to do the maths yourself.

Seems a fair compromise to me. And, let’s be honest, the tin and bottle do look fantastic. Time to drink!

Nose: A walk on the clifftops. Muddy boots, beeswax, lavender, wet flowers, with dusty icing sugar, barley sugar, salty sand, pear skin and a little tropical papaya.

Palate: Sweet and salty, with a rich and buttery maltiness. Grassy notes with honey and lemon throat sweets, ripe pears and a rising crisp dry peat smoke.

Finish: Toasted oak, black tea.

I really like this. This is a tasty PC bottling with enough going on with the nose and palate to contend with the flavour of bottlings that are twice its age. No fancy wine finishes, either, just straight-up ex-Bourbon barrels for that clean, maritime, peaty profile around a buttery, slightly-citrus core spirit.

Very well priced, this. £48 in Booths, Media City. Similar prices online from the usual suspects.

Octomore 06.3 Islay Barley

Distillery: Bruichladdich
Bottled: 2014, Distilled: 2009
Age: 5 years old
Bottles: 18,000
ABV: 64%
More Info: WhiskyBase

Quite dark in the glass for a five-year-old. Thick line of oil sticks on swirling. At 64%, this is serious stuff!

Octomore releases always push the limit when it comes to peating levels but this is a whopper even compared to others in the range. Typical peating levels are 167 parts of phenol per million – this release weighs in at 258PPPM!

Nose: Savoury, cooked meats, sweet Summer hay, sea spray, thyme and lavender. Quite grassy, and nowhere near as phenolic as you’d expect for such an intensely peated malt.

Palate: Very malty to start. Intense medicinal rush, calms down to reveal a little barbecued banana. Lots of deep, earthy, vegetal and herby notes among the peat. There are sweeter, raisiny, chocolatey, coffee notes in there too – odd since I don’t think the spirit’s seen the inside of a sherry barrel.

Finish: Salty butter on toast, liquorice root, smoked cheese. Long – very long. Lip-smacking ages after it’s gone.

Phwoar. This is going down beautifully… It’s comforting, but fierce. Earthy, but sweet too. So many outdoor notes of herbal vegetation – you can nose it for hours and still find more character appearing.

Love the frosted glass on the bottle, too. It harks back to Octomore 04.2, “Comus”, and looks… well, sexy as all hell.

Not cheap at £130 in Booths, though online retailers seem to be pitching it at £145-£155 so it’s a decent saving and not exactly an order of magnitude more expensive than the Scottish Barley Octomore.

In Closing

As usual, Laddie have made a a couple of honest, charming, thought-provoking drams that are a true snapshot of the place in which they’re created. I like the Port Charlotte more than the Scottish Barley release, and it’s definitely good value if you want an interesting peated dram.

The Octomore, though, is utterly glorious. So much going on in the glass, and devastatingly easy to drink even at full cask strength and with all that peat. Velvety, sweet, savoury, herbal, earthy and lip-smacking on the long finish.

I poured a glass for myself and my folks recently. My dad’s a huge peat freak so I knew he’d be intrigued, but my mother typically only goes for a nip of something mild and sweet. To my great surprise, she loved it, and asked for another dram! If that isn’t a rousing success, I don’t know what is…

I often wax lyrical about Bruichladdich but I have to say, hand on heart, the Islay Barley Octomore is the best Octomore I’ve ever tasted. Bravo!

 * Except perhaps when it comes to what Jim puts in the Black Art…

Ardbeg Kildalton 2014

Sean Handley Islay ,

Distillery: Ardbeg
ABV: 46%
Cask: Bourbon and refill sherry
More Info: WhiskyBase

Back to Islay for my next dram, and that ever-popular of the Kildalton three: Ardbeg.

The Kildalton Cross is a special release bottling that’s got the collectors in fever pitch and the auction sites buzzing. Given the prices on the secondary market, and the huge furore surrounding purchase from primary sources, I usually give the Ardbeg special editions a miss (though I’m always ready to taste a sample, of course).

Popular opinion of the quality of Ardbeg special editions varies greatly, particularly with the tendency to release NAS whisky of late. The Feis Ile release this year, Auriverdes, had a lot of negative reactions (I think it was the only NAS whisky on offer during the festival, besides Laphroaig’s Cairdeas).

I can understand the disappointment when special editions don’t have age statements, though I have to say right now that I love the distillery’s standard NAS releases Uigeadail and Corryvreckan. I usually have a bottle of the former open on my whisky shelf and it makes me smile every time I pour a glass. For the price, it may actually get you the best value for money when it comes to Islay drams.

So in my eyes, when it comes to Ardbeg, it needn’t be an old specimen to be balanced, interesting, and tasty.

The 1980 and 1981 Kildalton releases at cask strength have great reputations among Ardbeg fans of old. But will this non-cask strength NAS release of the same name fire up a new generation and keep the die-hards from pining for the good old days…?

Having never been lucky enough to try those older vintages, I should be safe from pie-eyed nostalgia at least. Time to taste!

Nose: Surprisingly calm, with a clinical character. Gentle medicinal peat smoke, bandages, sea water and soft leather. Not a hint of fruit.

Palate: Vanilla toffee with ginger and almonds. A little cough mixture. The trademark Ardbeg peat is in there, but it’s not as robust as core expressions. Instead of starting on full-blast phenols and tailing off, the smoke builds in the mouth. Touch of seaweed in there.

Finish: A smidgeon of dried fruit, but quite tart – more like apricots than raisins. Some drying, nutty, oaky notes linger.

Frankly, this is a very bland expression for Ardbeg. I can see the attraction for them to produce a thought-provoking, subtle, refined whisky to contrast with the loud, intense, party-in-your-mouth profiles we know and love. But, this isn’t it.

It took quite a long time to open up and for distinct notes to present themselves. I daren’t add water at all, lest all flavour disappear entirely.

To be honest, it’s not unpleasant. It’s not a bad whisky. But my mouth misses the party. It’s like sipping a flat cola, the flavour is familiar but it doesn’t hit the spot like you’d hoped. Like going round to an old school friend’s place after years and finding they’ve become a bit… well… boring.

I could let them off given that this was a release to raise money for charity, and so much of it will sit unopened in a cabinet to be admired. But this isn’t what I love about whisky – I need flavour. If there’s poetry on the palate then you could serve me the liquid in a shoe – the bottle, box, and marketing-bollocks is all a discardable vessel to get the whisky to my face.

I wanted to like this, I really did. I tried 2014’s Supernova release and it was absolutely thrilling. A rocketship on the marketing material and a cosmic explosion on the palate. If that whisky was a spaceman then I think this one is an accountant – not an unpleasant person to be with, per se, but he’s no Buzz Lightyear.

Stick to what you’re good at, lads. Loud, mad, boisterous whisky at cask strength. It’s not the lack of age statement here that’s let you down – it’s more a lack of character and a lost sense of adventure.

There’s samples of this on Master of Malt for £10.57 if you fancy a go.

Kilchoman 5 Year Old (Master of Malt)

Sean Handley Islay ,

Distillery: Kilchoman
Bottled: 2013, Distilled: 2008
Age: 5 years old
Bottles: 286
Bottler: Master of Malt
ABV: 59.6%
Cask: 1st-fill Bourbon
More Info: WhiskyBase

Nose: Faintly herbal with a coastal edge, like clifftop bushes. Acidic peat smoke giving way to sour-dough bread, butter, fresh oak, caramel, and custard creams.

Palate: Sweet vanilla caramel wraps bitter, peat smoke and charred wood, followed by unripe green fruit, sea-water, and floral notes.

Finish: Briny, with liquorice root.

That first-fill bourbon cask is really evident here – so much fresh oak, floral notes, and vanilla! That trade-mark Kilchoman smoke is quite dry and earthy so it’s a nice mix of savoury and sweet flavours.

Octomore Rivesaltes Cask 2008 (RABT)

Sean Handley Islay , ,

Distillery: Octomore (Bruichladdich)
Bottled: 2014, Distilled: 2008
Age: 6 years old
Bottles: 302
Bottler: Rest And Be Thankful
ABV: 64.1%
Cask: French Oak (Rivesaltes Wine Cask)
More Info: WhiskyBase

Oh, hello, Octomore. You smooth, sweet, delicately-caged tiger of a whisky.

For the uninitiated – Octomore is the super-heavily peated line of whiskies produced by Bruichladdich. They tend to have a complex character, with a lot of really interesting flavours coming out in spite of the very high ABV and PPPM.

It’s weird, but I find the Port Charlotte releases more in-your-face-peat-smoky than the Octomore – with a typical phenol level of between 160 and 260, this is a big surprise (PC is nearer 40, about the same as Ardbeg).

I’ve had the pleasure of several official bottlings, last year’s Feis Ile bottling, and even a generous measure of a Château d’Yquem matured 10-year-old at the distillery warehouse*.

This stuff is always an adventure to taste, so an independent bottling is very exciting news indeed. Aged six years entirely in a Rivesaltes French wine cask. I don’t know much about Rivesaltes as a wine, but I understand it’s aged for a long time so I’m hoping for some dry, tart, rich character to come through to the whisky.

Let’s dive in…

Nose: Salted butter, Hollandaise sauce, cured meats, icing sugar, wax, damp dusty wood, fresh leather, sherbet, pear skin, refreshers and fragrant resin.

Palate: Sweet and oily with pine resin, basil and honeydew melon. It develops into formidably drying earthy peat smoke, alongside toasted oak, sea salt, lime juice, ginger and vanilla cream.

Finish: The sweetness dies down to leave salty and savoury cheese crackers, with earthy peat. After a few minutes, it feels like you could pick it out of your teeth!

Wow! Like being at an old wooden amusement park at night, eating eggs-Benedict, while the children enjoy sweet candy floss and salty popcorn. Honestly, it’s like a three-course-meal of a dram. Loads of unusual savoury notes amidst the expected peat smoke and sweet, buttery fruit notes.**

My gosh, I loved this. At £185 it’s more expensive than the standard Octomores (usually somewhere between £90 and £150 on the primary market), but that Rivesaltes cask really works for me and it takes the spirit in a new direction – I mean, how often do you nose a peaty whisky and get Hollandaise sauce??

Quoth the Rivesaltes, “Octomore!”.

Bottles and samples on Master of Malt are £185 and £13.57, respectively. Rest-And-Be-Thankful are a mystery to me as a bottler, and I can’t find any information about them. If anyone knows anything, do give me a shout on Twitter!

* Yes, it was sublime.
**I didn’t add water – this really doesn’t need it, at all.

Laphroaig 18

Sean Handley Islay

Distillery: Laphroaig
Age: 18 years old
ABV: 48%
More Info: WhiskyBase

By far the most widespread Islay malt. You’re hard-pressed these days to go into a supermarket in the UK that doesn’t have the Laphroaig 10 in the Single Malt section of the spirits aisle.

This tends to be the Marmite of whiskies as well – known for its strong smoke and medicinal iodine flavour. When people think of peated whisky, I’d say Laphroaig is the one the majority of the general public would point to.

Laphroaig’s marketing department are well aware of this, hence their popular “Opinions Welcome” marketing campaign on YouTube.

So with all that to consider, what will an additional eight years in the cask do to the overall character of the whisky?

Nose: Very fruity and floral! Starts with ripe pear, cherry blossom, fruit pastilles, and beeswax. Beneath the bright fruity notes, I get a whiff of a fragrant peat bog, cedar wood and a soft, maritime breeze.

Palate: Cherry jam, barley fields, plums, dates, honeydew melon with a rising waft of peat smoke at the end.

Finish: Warm peat, black pepper, and a little bit of Earl Grey.

This is intensely fragrant and fruity. If Laphroaig usually conjures up images of fireplaces in Winter storms, this dram is one of those fleeting Summer days on Islay where the flowers are out and the breeze is warm and sweet.

That extra time in cask has let the phenols of the peated barley calm down and the oak has imparted a lot more sweet, fruity influence. The result is a lighter, sweeter whisky with a lot more going on than peat.

Available in limited quantities each year, you can find this online at all good whisky retailers. Master of Malt have samples at £6.21 and bottles at £73.96.

Mango Chicken Vindaloo, SMWS 127.40

Sean Handley Islay , ,

Screen Shot 2015-01-28 at 21.52.19Distillery: Port Charlotte (Bruichladdich)
Bottled: 2014, Distilled: 2002
Age: 12 years old
Bottles: 159
ABV: 63%
Cask: Refill Bourbon
More Info: WhiskyBase

My gosh – it’s another peaty number from my favouritest distillery in the whole wide world. And to boot, it’s a bottling from those civilised folks up in Leith – the Single Malt Whisky Society.

I’m not a member of SMWS myself, but I’m a big fan of their bottlings and style of presentation. The language they use to discuss the whisky is very sensory and a world apart from the traditional means of discussing the malty-liquid-of-life.

Let’s dive in!

Nose: Icing sugar, play-doh, fried pineapple chutney, crusted salt, rubber boots, pear syrup, with a herby touch of sweet basil. May be the power of suggestion, but I can make out a spicy element – Sweet capsicum, cinnamon, and paprika. No chilli peppers, though.

Palate: Sweet, sour, and syrupy to start, with peat fire kicking in at the end and fading gently. Boiled sweets, barley sugar, kaffir lime juice, Caramac-esque notes of milky toffee, caramel, and chocolate, with a little bitter coffee. Peat smoke, oil, and tar on the tail. Yum – loads going on.

Finish: Slightly drying. Gentle warming spices. Ginger, clove, black pepper and a little more crusted salt.

Oooh, yes.

I love Port Charlotte at any age – it’s full of complexity at five years old, at twelve years old, and everywhere inbetween. And, consistently tasty with (or without) fancy finishes. Here it is shining in a refill barrel with a crowded-house of a flavour profile.

I didn’t try it with water, because it’s pretty spectacular at full cask strength, and it doesn’t burn or over-impose itself. This is something else I love about Bruichladdich – they can consistently release whisky with a high ABV and it feels soft and buttery in the mouth, brimming with delicate flavours.

Mmmmmm, yes. These SMWS members might just be onto something…

Thanks very much to Ben Cops for the sample.

Bruichladdich Port Charlotte PC5

Sean Handley Islay ,

This, I’m very proud to say, is one of those bottles that has pride of place on my whisky shelf. This is genesis. The first in the Port Charlotte “PC” series – the PC5.*

A monster of peat, matured in sherry, with the expertise, craft, and love of Mr. Jim McEwan. Let’s taste this little beauty.

Nose: Very herbaceous. Thyme and rosemary with a sea-salt edge. Distinct from the herbs is a candied fruit note, presumably from the sherry cask – I get grapes, tart raspberries, and apples with maybe a whiff of pear skin. There’s something very desserty about it.

Palate: Peated chocolate. An explosion of fruity syrup, wrapped in herbaceous peat smoke. Lemon, tangerine, sherbet dips, rounding off into peaches, marmalade, plums and dates.

Finish: Sea salt, bitter dark chocolate, black pepper.

Overall….. phwoar. This is the unbridled power of Islay vegetation, crystallised inside a sweet, candied amber resin of fruit. Tonight I’m enjoying this with a slab of orange dark chocolate and this is ludicrously good – a full body experience, rattling the senses.

No water needed here, in spite of the 63.5% ABV. This is the West Coast Scotch Malt experience as it was meant to be. Raw, riotous, powerful, and exquisitely wrapped in urbane, sensuous sherry notes.

My word. This is primal, pure, unrestrained whisky paradise.

*Though I will say, I didn’t crack the bottle open. The sample came from those lovely folks at WhiskySample.nl

Caol Ila 30 (2014 Special Release)

Sean Handley Islay ,

Distillery: Caol Ila
Bottled: 2014, Distilled: 1983
Age: 30 years old
ABV: 55.1%
Cask: Refill American and European Oak
More Info: WhiskyBase

I’ve been looking forward to this one! In 2014, I tried Cadenhead’s Small Batch release of Caol Ila 29 and it totally blew me away.

Given that the indy bottling was £100 and Diageo’s official Caol Ila 30 year old goes for over £400, I think my mind’s already made up as to what the best deal is.

But what about the whisky itself?

Nose: Sweet clementines, but also that cloudy apple juice note, tangy sherbet, some milk chocolate.

Palate: Very oily, with more orange citrus notes, and some tropical fruits bordering on melon and pineapple. Woody notes, with soft peat smoke and a peppery tang. Some leathery, savoury flavours in there.

Finish: Quite peppery, with lingering smoke.

It has a lot of the same characteristics that the Cadenhead’s bottling has. Gentle smoke and citrus notes with some interesting fruit coming through as well as an oily, savoury influence from the wood that gives it that dusty, leathery quality.

It’s an interesting whisky, for sure. But it is quite peppery and woody on the finish and the flavour in comparison to the 29 seems quite subdued. Still good, of course; but, I didn’t enjoy it as much. There’s a difference between being subtle, and being faint.

The Caol Ila 30 is a vatting of 30-year-old whisky aged in American and European refill casks. I’d imagine Diageo have tried to engineer it to have similar qualities to a 30 year old Port Ellen – leather, soft smoke, maritime savoury notes etc. They have a lot more Caol Ila stock to play with, and the golden goose of Port Ellen will stop laying eggs eventually.

Sadly, I think the refill casks they used here were a little too tired to carry the spirit for 30 years and the vatting process between American and European oak has lost something in translation.

If I hadn’t tried such a sensational Caol Ila from Cadenhead beforehand then I may have been more impressed, but it’s not the way it panned out. Sorry, Diageo, this time you lose.

Love the packaging, though. It’ll look lovely in display cabinets across the world.

Samples and bottles available from the Chaps at Master of Malt for £32.34 and £425 respectively.

Caol Ila Moch

Sean Handley Islay ,

Distillery: Caol Ila
Age: No Age Statement
ABV: 43%
More Info: WhiskyBase

Moch is a no-age-statement release where the barley isn’t as heavily peated as the standard 12-year-old. It’s a very similar price to the standard bottling, and the cut-back on PPM reveals some very appealing flavours.

Nose: Sea air, brine, soft smoke, sea-shells and sand. This is a walk on the Atlantic coast.

Palate: Oily but delicate coastal notes allow some soft fruit to come through with a hint of that lemon candy and sherbet. Very soft in the mouth.

Finish: Salt and pepper.

I actually like this more than the standard release. And that’s saying something because I really like the standard release. If you’re looking for an easy-sipping, interesting, and affordable Islay malt then look no further.

No doubt, it was intentionally engineered to be all of those things – but in their objectives, I think Diageo have done well with this one.

Available on Master of Malt for £42.75.

Caol Ila 1998 Unpeated (2014 special release)

Sean Handley Islay ,

Distillery: Caol Ila
Bottled: 2014, Distilled: 1998
Age: 15 years old
ABV: 60.3%
Cask: First-fill bourbon
More Info: WhiskyBase

Here’s a curve ball – a Caol Ila without even a trace of peat. Will it be recognisable as the gentle, smoky, maritime malt that we know and love? Let’s see……

Nose: Milk, pear syrup, honeysuckle, acetone, vanilla, citrus and sherbet.

Palate: Lemon candy, and more sherbet. Herby, floral notes – lavender and thyme. Sweet malt and cereal, with a little more milk – whole milk, too, quite creamy. Viscous mouthfeel, but not actually creamy.

Finish: Some citrus tang remains, a touch of salt and toasted oak at the very end.

I never would have guessed the ABV is so high. There’s no burn at all, the spirit feels very soft in the mouth with delicate notes to the flavour.

Caol Ila usually gets lemon candy and salt in the tasting notes, and those are most definitely still in evidence. Even the sherbet quality on the nose, which I always assumed to be the peat talking.

I tried the Stitchell’s Reserve unpeated Caol Ila last year and wasn’t especially impressed. This bottling’s head and shoulders above it and maintains what we knew all along – the Caol Ila distillery produces some fantastic distillate, which can clearly stand on its feet without peated barley to zest it up.

No samples currently, but the chaps at Master of Malt have bottles available for £73.96. That’s pretty good for a 15-year-old spirit at such a high cask strength – throw in the intrigue of an unpeated Caol Ila and the limited bottling run of 10,668 and you have a real bargain.