Build-Your-Own Raasay 2 2022 u/thebonewolf (Skotchtoberfest #17.1)

A bit of a bonus “review” to cap off the Skotchtoberfest lineup. Since I had a sample of every cask used in Raasay’s recipe, rather than finish the glass I decanted them into a vessel large enough to hold it. Here’s a quick little review of that for now after a couple days all mingling in there. I have a 1L barrel, but it exploded when someone knocked it off a table and I’m not a copper so it’s back together but decorative as I don’t think it will hold any liquid at this point. I’d already aged some Connemara twice in it after seasoning with cider (excellent after its aging, btw) and with red wine, so it probably didn’t have much left in it anyway. I have ordered another, and it’s been swelling for a couple days now for me to make my own preview into longer-aged Raasay malt. Still undecided how/if I might want to put something into it, so if anyone has ideas, please chime in. Hope you enjoy.

Raasay 2, 2022 Vintage, u/thebonewolf, Island (Mull)/New Jersey Single Malt, 63.5% ABV

Minutia: Distilled on Raasay and matured in various casks for 2 years and combined and bottled by me on October 1, 2022 yielding less than 1 bottle. Enjoyed neat in a glencairn.

Color: Burnished; 1.1.

Nose: Smoke, wine, wood, spice. A bit of a mess and obviously a new frankenblend but nothing off-putting

Taste: Smoke and pepper. Malty, but weirdly so.

Finish: Nice smoke, but it turns into spice. The smoke comes back with leather and keeps the pepper. Medium-short.

So just dumping the samples together doesn’t do much for them, but the finish was something I could live with in a proper whisky. Hopefully some marrying and aging time in my tiny barrel will get this together.

Score: 74

Musical Evocation: Alice Cooper – “Feed My Frankenstein”

Raasay Batch R-02 (Skotchtoberfest #17)

And we wrap up Skotchtoberfest with a bottle of the second batch from Raasay. Let’s see what the batch variation is like relative to yesterday’s review.

Raasay Batch R-02, Island (Raasay) Single Malt, 46.4% ABV

Minutia: Distilled in 2017 and 2018 from peated and unpeated malt, each style matured for 3 years in ex-rye casks, virgin chinkapin oak casks, and ex-Bordeaux red wine casks. Enjoyed neat in a glencairn.

Color: Deep copper; 1.0.

Nose: Light smoke with an ashy quality, like from kindling rather than a roaring or dying fire. Drying red fruit. Dried stone fruit. Musty notes come in when you get your nose in there, otherwise it’s just the traces of smoke, really.

Taste: Spicy. Creamy feel. Some smoke manifests as earthy cereals.

Finish: Malt then leather and spice. Chocolate. Gets sweeter over time.

It’s not often I feel I need to comment on a handful of things, but it’s the case here. Frist, wow, surprising how much darker it is than batch R-01. I like them about the same, but differently. Batch 1 the nose was stronger but I liked the finish more here. Getting sweeter over time was weird as sweetness in the finish in my experience has typically been either a burst at the start that fades or largely consistent throughout. The peat in the nose was lighter here, which I why I enjoyed it a touch less, but based on color and lighter smoke presence I’d guess this is a touch older and not just bottled at exactly three years old, supposing the cask ratios are the same. As far as I’m concerned, Raasay has established itself as a future big player in the lightly peated market. Here’s hoping for a heavily peated line (and an unpeated one while they’re at it) somewhere down the line.

Score: 83

Musical Evocation: Gorillaz – “Feel God Inc.”

Raasay Batch R-01 (Skotchtoberfest #16)

I didn’t get a bottle of this, mostly because I did get a bottle of the inaugural release so I wasn’t super motivated to get a bottle of the first batch, but there was a sample available, so here’s a review of the first batch of their typical blend.

Raasay Batch R-01, Island (Raasay) Single Malt, 46.4% ABV

Minutia: Distilled in 2017 and 2018 from peated and unpeated malt, each style matured for 3 years in ex-rye casks, virgin chinkapin oak casks, and ex-Bordeaux red wine casks. Batch R-01 yielded 26,000 bottles. Enjoyed neat in a glencairn.

Color: Yellow gold; 0.5.

Nose: Smoke and leather. Non-red apple. There’s malt and floral notes to be teased out.

Taste: Creamy, vanilla. Pepper and slight smoke come in, with a woody/winey feel.

Finish: Sweet, some bitter herbal character.

While some of the components may have struck me more, this feels a whole lot more put together. This first release from Raasay of what will ostensibly be the makeup of future releases once stock matures enough is very promising. Can’t wait to see if Batch R-02 is consistent tomorrow.

Score: 83

Raasay Peated Ex-Bordeaux Red Wine Cask (Skotchtoberfest #15)

Wrapping it up with the style in Raasay’s blend that most appeals to me: peat and wine. Let’s go.

Raasay Peated Ex-Bordeaux Red Wine Cask, Island (Raasay) Single Malt, 63.5% ABV

Minutia: Distilled from peated barley and matured for 3 years in an ex-Bordeaux red wine cask. Enjoyed neat in a glencairn.

Color: Tawny; 1.4.

Nose: A dying fire on a beach with wind blowing out to sea. A man in a leather chair is enjoying a pipe upwind.

Taste: Spicy smoke. A musty wine cellar where a bottle or two las leaked or been broken over the decades.

Finish: Woody and smoked. Some spice, though it’s less spicy than the taste but overall more intense. Long.

This is fine, but more time is needed as I didn’t feel the wine cask gave had enough influence. 

Score: 80

Raasay Unpeated Bordeaux Red Wine Cask (Skotchtoberfest #14)

I’ve historically liked expressions that saw some time in wine casks, so these last two, particularly the peated one due up tomorrow, are ones I’ve been particularly looking forward to. Let’s go.

Raasay Unpeated Ex-Bordeaux Red Wine Cask, Island (Raasay) Single Malt, 63.5% ABV

Minutia: Distilled from unpeated barley and matured for 3 years in an ex-Bordeaux red wine cask. Enjoyed neat in a glencairn.

Color: Tawny; 1.4.

Nose: Malty, musty, winey.

Taste: Winey malt, like it was soaked or marinated in red wine or something. Earthy spices (not each of those notes separately; spices which are earthy).

Finish: Light sweetness, hot/peppery. Medium.

I don’t dislike this, but nothing really calls to me. There’s nothing obviously struggling to get through the ABV, but it does feel like the ABV is running the show, and I wonder how a more aged or diluted version would taste. I’m still anticipating the peated version, by my enthusiasm is a bit tampered.

Score: 72

Raasay Peated Virgin Chinkapin Oak Cask (Skotchtoberfest #13)

I liked the unpeated one (at least enough where I’d like to try it when it’s older), plus someone commented about this one on that post, so I’m really looking forward to the peated variety. Here we go.

Raasay Peated Virgin Chinkapin Oak Cask, Island (Raasay) Single Malt, 63.5% ABV

Minutia: Distilled from peated malt and matured for 29 months in a virgin chinkapin oak cask. Enjoyed neat in a glencairn.

Color: Tawny; 1.4.

Nose: Smoky, leathery, red fruit.

Taste: Smoke, spice.

Finish: Musty, earthy. Smoke and charred wood.

This is very close to a good whisky in its own right. I really quite liked it, and it’s a lot of what I like from the unpeated variety but with elements that peat gives. The heat didn’t have as much of a negative impact this time around, but there also wasn’t an interesting note hiding behind the ethaol that I couldn’t tease out. Still, it holds its own and gives notes of a nature similar to what I find often in Octomore, Port Charlotte, and Ledaig.

Score: 80

Raasay Unpeated Virgin Chinkapin Oak Cask (Skotchtoberfest #12)

As far as I know, this is the first exposure to chinkapin oak (as least where they specify it), and one of few if not the only of a Scotch aged only in virgin wood. I’m interested in how this, and the peated one tomorrow, go.

Raasay Unpeated Virgin Chinkapin Oak Cask, Island (Raasay) Single Malt, 63.5% ABV

Minutia: Distilled from unpeated malt and matured for 27 months in a virgin chinkapin oak cask Enjoyed neat in a glencairn.

Color: Tawny; 1.4.

Nose: Dark and red fruits. Sweet overall.

Taste: Malty, spicy. Quite hot, really. It’s unfortunate as it hides something interesting that the heat renders too fleeting for me to get a read on it.

Finish: Bubblegum. Woody and tannic. Medium-short.

Interesting, and overall a positive first exposure to this wood. It’s not as together as it could be (expected given the nature of what it is, of course), but I can say I’d love a proper bottling of this style of spirit. Particularly aged long enough to mute that ethanol without taking away what I was trying to find on the palate. I think it’s also the first time I’ve gotten an obvious and strong bubblegum note in a whisky.

Score: 75

Musical Evocation: Rob Zombie – “Sick Bubblegum”

Raasay Peated Rye Cask (Skotchtoberfest #11)

Yesterday’s unpeated version was fine but young. Let’s see what difference the peat makes.

Raasay Peated Rye Cask, Island (Raasay) Single Malt, 63.5% ABV

Minutia: Distilled from peated malt and matured for 29 months in an ex-Woodford Reserve rye cask. Enjoyed neat in a glencairn.

Color: Jonquil, ripe corn; 0.4.

Nose: Very earthy smoke. Tar, iodine. Bold leather and tobacco. Better than it has any right to be.

Taste: Smoke, doughy malt.

Finish: Smoke, ash, spice, wood.

After the nose it drops off a bit. The palate is still fine, but the nose is actually incredible. It’s good for its age, but I’d love any whisky with a nose like this. It carried its score from a promising new make score to one of an ok whisky. The palate is a bit youthful, though. This experiment just got interesting.

Score: 80

Musical Evocation: Judas Priest – “You’ve Got Another Thing Coming”

Raasay Unpeated Rye Cask (Skotchtoberfest #10)

Finally the beginning of some reviews I’ve been looking forward to for a while. I ordered a pack of the six different types of casks Raasay uses (three cask types, each with peated and unpeated malt) and the next six days will be each of those, followed by the first two batches. Here we go.

Raasay Unpeated Rye Cask, Island (Raasay) Single Malt, 63.5% ABV

Minutia: Distilled from unpeated malt and matured for 27 months in an ex-Woodford Reserve rye cask. Enjoyed neat in a glencairn.

Color: Jonquil, ripe corn; 0.4.

Nose: Dough, toast. Salt/minerality.

Taste: Dough, spicy.

Finish: Cayenne pepper. Chocolate. Short.

Hmm. It’s got a note I get in Kilkerran, specifically the heavily peated expressions, in the form of a dough. But it’s not quite the fried dough I get from Kilkerran. I suppose that means it’s some new makey stuff coming through, but in the Kilkerran’s it does it in a way pleasing to me. This isn’t offensive, but I’m pretty neutral about it. As a stand alone drink, of course; I wouldn’t be interested in a Na Sia bottle of this, at least this early in Raasay’s life. My take is that this is in the blend to add some spice and a chocolatey-malty note in the finish. While the overall finish is short, that lingers, and surprisingly it’s something I associate with some very well aged unpeated drams, so it’s cool to see it in here and if I weren’t already I’d be interested to see what comes through at various ages as Raasay gets older stock as time goes one..

Score: 70

Isle of Raasay While We Wait Last Orders & Inaugural Release

Not a terribly long time ago I saw on Raasay’s webshop that they could ship to the US so I put in a preorder for their Inaugural Release and also added a bottle of the whisky they sourced to kind of “demonstrate” what their whisky will be like, as well as get some cash coming in. So, fortunately for me I got this at a normal price and not the wildly absurd flipped prices I saw this going for. Anyway, I figured I do these together to see how well the While We Wait series served as a bit of a “preview” for what was to come.

Isle of Raasay While We Wat Last Orders, Single Malt, 46% ABV

Minutia: Distilled somewhere ang aged for some amount of time prior to a finish in Tuscan red wine casks. Since the Tuscan casks were kind of their thing at the time, I assume that finishing occurred on Raasay. This was from bottle number 5703 of the “Last Orders” line of the While We Wait series, the fifth and final batch prior to a release distilled at the distillery. Enjoyed neat in a glencairn side by side with the Inaugural release.

Color: Russet, Muscat; 1.3.

Nose: Musty, taken over quickly by nuts with a fruity element. Toffee. Earthy and floral. Maybe berry/banana a bit. Vanilla.

Taste: Smoky, vanilla and toffee. Wood.

Finish: Wood, smoky porter/stout, so malt and chocolate. Medium.

This is decent and would be a fine regular product from whoever distilled it. The finish was really nice, reminding me of the finish of certain beers, and as a person who avoids beer most of the time in favor of whisky and cider, it’s a reminder that I do quite like the darker beers like that. Anyway, if this were like the final spirit it’s a good sign, so lets see if it was.

Score: 78

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Isle of Raasay Inaugural Release, Island (Raasay) Single Malt, 52% ABV

Minutia: Distilled from 100% Scottish concerto barley malted to >48ppm and matured in ex-Tennessee whiskey casks and finished in ex-Bordeax red wine casks, both 1st fill, for a total maturation time of 3 years. This is from bottle number 7565. Enjoyed neat in a glencairn side by side with While We Wait Last Orders.

Color: Tawny; 1.4.

Nose: A bit like wine, gentle smoke, some sea feeling to it. Earthy and dirty.

Taste: Earthy and fruity with salty smoke lingering underneath.

Finish: Smoke and salty meat pop up after a woody start, and fade into chocolate. Sour fruit after. Medium.

This is a promising start for me. I have a handful of ofther whisky from them for review a bit down the line (a sample of batch R-01 and a bottle of R-02) which follow their formal six-cask type recipe, as well as samples of each specific cask (3 styles of cask, unpeated and peated spirit in each). That will be fun when I have those later this year. With the fact that the nose felt like wine, I have good hopes for the mature spirit as I tend to favor peated spirit that saw a wine cask.

Score: 81