Port Charlotte Islay Barley 2008
Bruichladdich has been pushing the sense of locality and terroir with their NAS offerings lately, and this Port Charlotte is no different, made with barley exclusively from the island of Islay, something the Peat Project we tried a few years ago didn’t claim, and a variant of the Scottish barley used in the Classic Laddie we recently had. The grain was harvested in 2008 from the farms at Coull, Kynagarry, Island, Rockside, Starchmill & Sunderland, then distilled that December before being aged on the shores of Loch Indaal. You’d strain to find a more local dram.
SnapShot: Northern Exposure (Whiskies from Sweden)
SnapShot is a new type of feature we’re trying here at Scotchology, specifically geared for sampling groups of whiskies that belong together for some reason or are in small quantities. Eschewing many of the finer details normally found in our standard reviews, this is meant to be our quick reactions instead of a deep dive. Also unlike our normal reviews, we’ll be grouping these impressions together instead of breaking them out by individual. Rapid fire by the dram, if you will, and very unfiltered. In other words, this is as close as you’re likely to get to sitting at the table with us as we venture into the unknown. There are currently no plans to schedule these beyond when the opportunity arises. First up is a Swedish whisky set we put together from Masters of Malt!
Kilchoman 100% Islay
Still barely over a decade old and thus not quite ready to release aged statements, Kilchoman has used their youth to explore variations on their spirit, often in very creative expressions. One of the rising trends over the past several years has been a focus on terroir. The 100% Islay (3rd Edition) is a dram where the entirety of the process is done on Islay. The barley is grown there, malted there, distilled, matured and bottled there. It’s bottled at a higher alcohol strength but the peat level is lowered compared to their other releases. That is not a common occurrence in today’s world. First launched in 2010, the bottle in this review is from 2012.