The Malt Cask

 Time to get back into some of the samples I have in stock! Photo courtesy of  www.masterofmalt.com Distillery : Bunnahabhain Bottler : Adelphi (Liddesdale) Age : 21 years old Distilled : n/a Bottled : n/a Cask : Mix of Bourbon and Sherry Hogsheads Abv : 46% Unchillfiltered : Yes Natural Colour : Yes Nb of bottles : 1011 Extra : This is batch 10  My tasting notes Nose: Fresh, fruity. yellow fruit, melon, apricot, peach, some fresh oak too, acacia honey, slight confectionary and floral notes, lemon and orange blossom. Great start! Palate:  Barley sweetness, fresh fruit, a little spice and grapefruit bitterness, still some honey and slight nuttiness. Finish: Mix of honey, nuts, grapefruit and slightly drying oak spice. Lingering nicely! With water: The nose is even fruitier, the palate is sweeter with more honey and the finish is a little spicier but less bitter. What a delicious dram! Definitely one to add to my auction wacthlist! Slàinte all!

For the last review, I tried a youngish (probably) sherried blended malt from Berry Bro's and Rudd. Today, a bit of the same but this time the sherried blended malt is a little old and it's from Chorlton Whisky. This is a bottle which was due to be released for Christmas but ended up being delayed and was finally out a couple of weeks ago. So what is it? First, where is it from? The bottle is produced by Chorlton Whisky a small independent bottler based in south Manchester. David, the owner is keen to present whisky he likes in the best way possible so his single casks bottles are offered at cask strength, in their original colour and without chill-filtration. A pretty good start. Next, the name? Còig Deicheadan means Five Decades in Gaelic so you get where this is heading.  The components? The information available for this bottle give us 4 names for this blended malt: Glenturret, Highland Park, Macallan and Bunnahabhain (looks like an Edrington mix!) T...

Since very early on in my whisky journey, I have been a big fan of Bunnahabhain, and as the 12 years old is the most affordable, I made sure never to run out of it. Last year, the company decided to revamp their packaging and dropped the Roman numerals and square black and gold boxes for grey tubes with different accents depending on the bottles. In terms of presentation, the whisky is still bottled at 46.3%, un-chillfiltered and in its natural colour. So surely, just a cosmetic change and no alteration to the juice in the bottle... I bought a new bottle for my dad as he was running low on his previous one and out of curiosity, we decided to compare both. Before telling you a little bit more about what I thought, I want to set things straight. The older bottling has been opened for over a year whereas the newer one has only been opened a couple of weeks. I have also found a little bit of batch variation in past with Bunnahabhain 12, from one bottle to an other. I will refer...

Apart from my post about the Caol Ila 19 from the Old Malt Cask range, I haven't actually reviewed anything more from independent bottlers. Today, I am going to change that with a bottle from Gordon and Macphail and their Macphail's Collection range. It is an 8 years old Bunnahabhain, but unlike the standard 12 I reviewed a few months ago, this one is "heavily peated".  If you are familiar with the Bunnahabhain distillery, you will know than despite being located in the North East of Islay, the single malt they produced is mostly unpeated. In my mind, it has this very distinctive Christmas cake nose and taste, rich, full of sultanas and dried fruit notes. Every now and then, they do release some peaty whisky with bottles like the Toiteach or Ceòbanach. I have never tried any of these before, so peaty Bunnahabhain is a first for me. As far as the Macphail's Collection range is concerned and according to the Gordon and Macphail's website , it is "a sma...

Last November, we decided with a few friends to organise a whisky trip to Islay during the Easter weekend. Even if I will have the two weeks following that weekend off, some of the people I am going with will be back at work on the Tuesday, so we decided to head North on the Thursday afternoon, hop on the ferry Friday morning and head back to Manchester on the Monday. This means our trip will be rather short, and it left me the tricky task of organising our time as best as possible. Looking on several websites and forums, I have found some information about people who have already been, but often, it tended to be answers to specific questions, that is why I thought I would share my experience. Today is therefore going to be about the organisation of the trip and I will update you on the actual visit probably when I am back after Easter. So as I mentioned before, our starting point was as follow: -5 people going to Islay  -leaving Manchester on the Thursday afternoon  ...

Bunnahabhain is a distillery I came across whist pursuing my Islay investigation. It isn't amongst the first bottles of single malt I bought as it never came up on my "peat radar". Of course, the distillery is found on Islay, but the Bunnahabhain taste is far away from the peat-monsters from the South.  I remember calling in at the Whisky shop Manchester last year and talking to the people there about Islay distilleries and other higher-than-average ppm producers before mentioning my desire to expand the range of flavours I was exposing my palate to. Bunnahabhain is one of the first names which came up in the conversation. I had read about their whisky but never tried it. The guys at the shop didn't have the standard 12 -which they recommended I tried- but they treated me to a small dram of the 25 year old... and boy what a treat! A lot of dried fruit richness, sweet raisins and spices. Incredible! I thought I definitely had to try the 12, which I found a few days ...