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.
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”
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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”
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.
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..
The follow-up to yesterday’s unpeated version on this expression, one I’ve been looking forward to for a while.
Ledaig 8 2012 Warehouse 1 Bourbon Cask, Island (Mull) Single Malt, 62.5% ABV
Minutia: Distilled on November 28, 2012 and matured for 8 years in an ex-bourbon cask numbered 564 before bottling on November 28, 2020. Enjoyed neat in a glencairn.
Nose: Beneath smoke and char and a seaside triage tent, something intensely sweet tries to break free. Aromatic tobacco, leather. Once the whisky’s been in the mouth, a return to the nose shows that sweet note having appeared in the form of an ice cream/cookie shake/blizzard type treat, albeit with a smoky flavor to it.
Taste: Smoke and ash. Spice, salt.
Finish: Char, smoke, burnt meat. Long.
What a treat. The nose was great and made better after a sip. The finish was great. The taste is fine, but compared to how good the other two it’s almost a let down. The taste actually kept the score down a fair bit, even though it gets a rather high score. A damn shame I don’t have a bottle of this one, it’s a real winner.
What got me checking out Tobermory’s website where I ended up with these samples in the first place was a glowing review on an 8-year-old bourbon cask Ledaig. It was sold out so I went for sample packs that contained it and other things, always happy to try more different expressions. In this case, I thought the idea of comparing something almost identical aside from the peat would be a fun one. The Ledaig’s coming up tomorrow, and here’s the Tobermory review.
Tobermory 8 2012 Warehouse 1 Bourbon Cask, Island (Mull) Single Malt, 57.8% ABV
Minutia: Distilled on April 4, 2012 and matured for 8 years in an ex-bourbon cask numbered 706 before bottling on November 6, 2020. Enjoyed neat in a glencairn.
Of the Tobermory samples in the pack that I didn’t buy the pack for, this is the one I was most please happened to be in it. So far my only experience with Manzanilla casks has been Ardbog which I enjoyed, so I’m keen on trying more of it, plus it’s got some nice age to it.
Tobermory 24 1995 Manzanilla Finish, Island (Mull) Single Malt, 52.7% ABV
Minutia: Distilled on December 16, 1995 and matured in an ex-bourbon casks for about 14 years before a finish of about 11 years in an ex-Manzanilla casks totaling 24 years before bottling on November 28, 2020. Enjoyed neat in a glencairn.
Nose: Brown sugar, molasses. It feels like how I imagine it would be to sniff a rummy syrup. A musty feel overall, but not so much that I’d use that word outright.
Taste: What I like in whisky that saw a Sherry cask. Chocolate/dark fruit combo. Some spice from the ethanol. If only it were peated.
Finish: Mineral. Otherwise a musty version of the taste. Medium-long.
This is very nice. For me, it seems that significant aging once again gets an unpeated dram up to my liking. I’ll have to venture more into this space as time goes on. Nice as it is, however, it would be a home run if it were Ledaig. Thinking back on it, I think I remember a Manzanilla Ledaig being well regarded and I’m not a bit surprised. This is a perfect example of a whisky with a score in that range of my scale. The options to better suit my tastes are indeed limited, in this case pretty much only to the barley having been peated. A pricy one, but a good one.
Taste: Sweet (big one first sip). Woody wine. Spice. If there’s such a thing as berry toffee.
Finish: Birght, malty pop at the get go. Settles quickly into dried fruit and spice. Char. Long. Nutty late in the finish, like after you think it’s gone but realize it’s still there and then on by the way you notice it’s nutty.
This is nice. It’s not amazing or anything, but it’s very interesting. It felt like I knew what it was offering pretty quickly, but it kept my interest. Comparing this to yesterday’s, to me it seems Tobermory wants to spend its whole life in a Sherry cask, not get a finish in one, at least in the case of PX Sherry.
I love Ledaig, so a while back I was order direct from their website and they had a handful of sample packs. This came in one of the sets I ordered.
Tobermory 12 2007 PX Finish, Island (Mull) Single Malt, 62.1% ABV
Minutia: Distilled in September 2007, matured for 21 years in a refill hogshead and finished in a PX hogshead before being bottled in January 2020 yielding 1324 bottles. Enjoyed neat in a glencairn.
Taste: Spiced wine. Warming and hot. Maple and wood later.
Finish: Fruity malt, some heat that fades. Nutty fruit, like some kind of trail mix liquid? Long.
It’s tasty. It’s not terribly complex, but it’s not too simple. It’s simple in the right way. Not quite like a dram that does very little but does what it does spectacularly, but one that does some and does it well. It’s a bit more enjoyable than my memory of the core expressions I’ve had. A downside though, is that I don’t get anything really maritime, and it’s not quite as funky as it could be.
Score: 81
Musical Evocation: Folkearth – “The Wine-Sacks of the Emperor”
I was born in 1989 so if there’s a chance of trying a birth year bottle from a distillery I like in a sample I’m going to get it. That’s the case here and it’s in this year’s Skotchtoberfest lineup, wrapping up the Bunnahabhains. Upcoming are a few Tobermorys and a Ledaig, followed by a fun little journey through the components in Rassay’s blend and their first two batches.
Nose: Initially light fruit, then honey, wood. Zest. Malt.
Taste: Honey in tea with a kick, honeydew, kiwi, a bit malty.
Finish: Malt and tropical fruit, hint of wood and spice, Medium-long.
This is a nice and light dram, but with substance. The tropical fruits were nice, particularly on a day while it’s still warm enough here. They were a bit unexpected as it’s been a while since I’ve had a Bunnahabhain from this era and at this age, and what I generally associate with that is a chocaltey malt flavor, particularly in the finish, and some notes that are maybe almost a bit like hops. A fun dram
Score: 84
Musical Evocation: Gwen Stefani – “4 in the Morning”
Minutia: A combination of Sherry casks and Port finished casks. It’s unclear what the spirit was in before the Port, but I’d guess -ex-bourbon as Sherry cask with a Port finish seems unnecessary. Enjoyed neat in a glencairn.
Finish: Dried fruit, nutty malt. Long. Sweet fruit and nuts linger quite a while.
This is alright, but a but lacking the peat I like and whatever it is unpeated drams I’ve loved have. It’s not bad by any means, but not really in what I’m looking for. Fans of unpeated Bunnahabhain I suspect would like this quite a lot.
Nearly all of my experience with Glen Scotia has been through the SMWS, and they’ve yet to disappoint. I bought one at a tasting a few months ago that I simply couldn’t believe was a Glen Scotia it was so unbelievably dirty. The first of these I grabbed one they released it for the festival season, and the other was just a delicious sounding whisky that happened to be a sister cask so it got paired with that for review. Here we go.
Glen Scotia 17, 2002 Vintage, Scotch Malt Whisky Society 93.128, Campbeltown Single Malt, 54.9% ABV
Minutia: Distilled on May 6, 2002 and matured in a refill ex-bourbon hogshead for 17 years yielding 213 bottles. This is part of the Oily & Coastal flavor profile named “Smoke and smugglers” released for the Campbeltown Malts Festival 2020. Enjoyed neat in a glencairn with its sister cask 93.144.
The flavor caught me off guard. I wasn’t expecting a sweetness as intense as it was, particularly after the nose. This all comes together really nicely and is definitely a bottle worthy of a festival label.
Score: 88
Glen Scotia 17, 2002 Vintage, Scotch Malt Whisky Society 93.144, Campbeltown Single Malt, 56.3% ABV
Minutia: Distilled on May 6, 2002 and matured in a 2nd-fill ex-bourbon barrel for 17 years yielding 199 bottles. This is part of the Lightly Peated flavor profile named “Not Just Coastal/Sea salt on chestnuts” the former title being the name given in the US due to labeling restrictions. Enjoyed neat in a glencairn with its sister cask 93.128.
Nose: Different; lighter but somehow heavier. Behind a light fruit lie rich tobacco and leather that draw you in. Very enticing.
Taste: Spicy, cereals, smoke, compote.
Finish: Very rich smoke, tobacco, leather, musty fruit. What a showstopper. Long.
Holy smokes, what a crazy finish. It’s just stellar and keeps on going. This reminds me of my favorite parts of some absolutely excellent whiskies that command a higher price for much less aging.
Score: 89
Musical Evocation: Linkin Park – “Given Up”
I’m very glad to be caught up with my typing and embarking on the “Skotchtoberfest” reviews, and what a kickoff. I think I may be tasting the finish from 93.144 throughout the season.
Last year someone was posting reviews during Oktoberfest and called them Skotchtoberfest. It wasn't until the festival had begun, so I decided starting this year I'd do reviews during that festival each day like I do for Advent, but keep the blind nature for the Advent season. I figured I'd stylize it with a 'k' to look more like the actual festival name.
