The magical Highlands
Royal Brackla
12 year 59.3%
Single Maturation in a Refill Bourbon Hogshead
Description:
We encountered a curious nose – combining straw, basketry and putty with treacle tarts, Old English Spangles and cereal bars (with chocolate, honey, raisins and dates). The palate had orange and lemon jelly slices, pomegranate and blood orange San Pelligrino; then aniseed balls and humbugs to finish. The reduced nose discovered hot cross buns, mulled wine and pomanders and a dry-cleaner’s next to an apothecary’s next to a tobacconist. The palate now had lovely soft, sweet syrupy fruits, dark honey and brown sugar, cherry pie and spotted dick, with a long-lasting finish of Victory V’s, Halls Soothers and stem ginger in syrup.
Ben Nevis
11 year 55.4%
Initial Cask: Bourbon Hoghead
Finish: 1st Fill Ex-Oloroso Sherry Hogshead
Description:
A lovely deep fruity aroma like that of a raspberry pudding topped with roasted pecans, hazelnuts and warm vanilla sauce. The taste was delicious creamy – a chocolate mouse or a rose, raspberry and coconut fool of crystallized rose petals, double cream and toasted coconut flakes. Diluted we made a black currant crumble spicing it up with Aleppo pepper and a shot of a digestive bitter made from a variety of aromatic herbs and matured in Slovenian oak barrels. On the palate now dark chocolate truffles, marzipan and a finish of sweet dried figs. After nine years in an ex-bourbon hogshead, we transferred this whisky into a 1st fill Oloroso hogshead.
Ardmore
13 year 58.41%
Initial Cask: Bourbon Hoghead
Finish: 1st Fill Ex-Red Wine Barrique
Description:
A monstrous nasal munch of pickled onions, honeycomb, smoky bacon crisps, wasabi peas, 1960s pub carpet, herbal extracts, cough medicines, boiled lime sweeties, sooty chimneys, smoked game meats and peat embers. Add a dollop of H2O and out comes metal polish, sooty coal scuttles, anthracite, bandages, gauze, ointments, herbal medicines, brine, haystacks, horse stables, old leather, black pepper, English mustard, horseradish and frying pancetta. The palate opens on black cherry jam, game terrine, putty, jasmine tea, hot smoked paprika, peppered mackerel, antiseptic and cow sheds. A few glugs of aged Burgundy, rancio and salted, pre-war Bovril. Water evolves things back towards the farmyard with tractor sorbet, bouillon, mutton stew, caraway, lardons, brown sauce and carbolic soap. Lovely, strange madness. After 12 years in a bourbon hogshead, this whisky was transferred to a first-fill charred red wine barrique.
Ruadh Maor (peated Glenturret)
9 year 63.7%
Initial Cask: Re-charred Bourbon Hoghead
Finish: Sherry (unspecified) Cask
Description:
A rich simmer of roast coffee beans, bonfire smoke, burning haystacks, flambeed steak, mint sauce, black tea, tarry hessian, bandages and sack cloth soaked in Germoline. Hints of screen wash, mutton stew, sheep wool, olive oil, pine resin, ham hock terrine and root beer. Water brings raw peat, dunnage, anchovies, black olives, wholemeal smoked pita bread and graphite oil. The palate is riddled with kippers, smoked salmon, horseradish, smoked tea, spiced peanuts and hot sauce. An oil slick on a smoked carpet. With water it's initially like sucking a copper coin, then crab sticks, fermenting hay, sourdough starter, aspirin, goat cheese rolled in ash, Lambic ale, aged medicines and spiced charcuterie. Mental and magical!