Last Night's Tipple

The label of my bottle of Bowmore Darkest single malt Islay Scotch (one of the old bottles containing 14-year old whisky, instead of the current -- and more expensive -- 15 year old version) has a little medallion in the center that says "From the No. 1 Vaults of Black Bowmore." The No. 1 Vaults are Bowmore's premier aging cellars, and Black Bowmore is a legendary special bottling released in 1964. It had been distilled in the 1920s and aged for 20 years in a first-fill Oloroso Sherry hogshead. That hogshead then began to leak, and the whisky in it was racked into Bourbon barrels to age for another 20 years. The 40 years of aging (20 of which in a hogshead which had contained the darkest of all the Sherry varieties) produced a Scotch that was opaque and dark as night. Supposedly, bottles of Black Bowmore come up for auction every now and then; and they typically go for astronomical sums.

This Darkest doesn't have quite the degree of color that Black Bowmore did, but it is plenty dark. It was aged for 12 years in ex-Bourbon barrels and then finished for an additional two years in ex-Sherry casks. I don't know what kind of Sherry those casks were, but I would bet that it wasn't fino -- the casks impart a great deal of color, sweetness, and flavor to the whisky; and a delicate Sherry like fino could not have had that kind of an impact. Bowmore's stills are relatively squat, and their charges are relatively heavy, both of which tend to reduce the copper contact during distillation. This makes the spirit heavy and pungent, and it takes a heavy and pungent Sherry like Oloroso to compete with it. And it does compete. The idea of a Sherry-finished Islay struck me as more than a bit odd when I first heard of it, but I think that it works with this whisky. The sweetness of the Sherry softens the smokiness and brininess of the Scotch, and it gives the whisky another dimension. The problem I have with most peaty Islay whiskies that I've had is that my enjoyment of them is mostly intellectual. Bowmore Darkest offers a good deal of sensual enjoyment, too.

Last Night's Tipple

It appears from their website that Compass Box has gotten rid of their Eleuthera bottling from their range. You may recall that Eleuthera was their original peaty offering, consisting mainly of a vatting of Caol Ila and Clynelish. It makes sense that they've discontinued this for a couple of reasons. First, it is possible that their sources of Caol Ila or Clynelish dried up. For reasons that I discuss below, I think it unlikely that it was Caol Ila that disappeared, but it certainly is possible that Clynelish did. Clynelish is owned by Diageo, and Diageo recently "promoted" it into its Classic Malts series where previously it had not been extensively marketed as a single malt. It's possible that Diageo no longer had surplus whisky from Clynelish to sell, and Compass Box was unable to find a replacement that would have kept the style of the finished vatting consistent. Second, there's the matter of marketing. Who in the heck knows what to expect from a bottle of whisky named Eleuthera? If I had just seen it on the shelf and had not read about it beforehand, I certainly would not have. The replacement for Eleuthera in Compass Box's portfolio is called Peat Monster. The idea is the same: vat an Islay whisky with a non-Islay whisky to get the characteristics of both Islay and the Highlands. Where Eleuthera used Clynelish, Peat Monster uses Ardmore. Ardmore is an old-style peated whisky where Clynelish is unpeated, so Peat Monster should have a higher phenol content than Eleuthera did; but still the idea is the same. The name, though, is much more marketable, especially in the United States. In recent times, extreme levels of hops have been a big selling point for American microbrewed beer; and the same is true for peat content and Scotch. Peaty whiskies are very popular here, and both distilleries and vatters have taken advantage of this in a big way. Any idiot can tell that a bottle labeled Peat Monster will be peaty, so it's a much easier sell for Compass Box than Eleuthera was. Oh, one more bit of trivia: Compass Box says that the Islay for Peat Monster comes from "the village of Port Askaig, as well as some south shore whisky (as of late 2007)." Port Askaig is on the east coast of Islay very close to Caol Ila. It's also relatively close to Bunnahabhain, but Bunnahabhain rarely produces peaty whisky. I'd be willing to bet that the Port Askaig whisky is Caol Ila. There are three distilleries on the south shore of Islay: Lagavulin, Laphroaig, and Ardbeg. Lagavulin is in extremely short supply, and there isn't much aged Ardbeg available due to its underproduction and neglect for most of the 1990s. I'd bet that the "south shore whisky" is Laphroaig. In any event, it's interesting that Compass Box doesn't explicitly reveal its sources here since they are usually not shy about doing so. I can only guess that their reticence is due to agreements that they made with the distilleries they bought the whisky from.

I haven't had Compass Box Eleuthera in quite some time, and I can't come up with a good explanation for that. The addition of Clynelish makes it less overpoweringly peaty than peated Islay malts are by themselves, and I think that that's a good thing. Peat, at least to my palate, tends to dominate everything else. It's enjoyable enough, I suppose, but I like to taste the malt and the wood influence on the whisky, too. Having Clynelish in the blend allows me to do that. Alas, the bottle is almost gone, and I won't be able to replace it. Of course, even if Compass Box still produced it, I wouldn't be able to replace it since they don't distribute in Texas apparently.

More Islay

I spoke to Ben this evening, and, as ever, he was in search of BIGGER, PEATIER ISLAY SCOTCHES. He specifically wanted to know if I knew anything about a Scotch that he had recently seen in liquor store named Auld Reekie. I had seen it, but I didn't know anything about it. I mentioned that I had also seen a bottling called The Big Smoke, but I also knew next to nothing about that, either. Through the miracle of the Interweb, though, knowledge is but a few keystrokes away.

Both Auld Reekie and The Big Smoke are vatted Islay malts produced by Duncan Taylor & Co., an independent bottler of Scotch originally based in Glasgow with a long and distinguished history. They don't reveal which distilleries provide the whisky that goes into either bottling, but it's not like the list of possibles is very long. It appears from casual reading that principal difference between The Big Smoke and Auld Reekie is age: Auld Reekie is 12 years old, while The Big Smoke is younger (how much younger is not specified). The Big Smoke also comes in both a 40% bottling and a cask-strength (60%) bottling, although I've only ever seen the 40% bottling. Age tends to mellow and reduce the impact of peat, so I would expect The Big Smoke to be wilder and more smoky. Neither one of them is cheap (The Big Smoke 40% sells for $41 a fifth at Spec's, while Auld Reekie goes for nearly $57 a fifth), even when compared with the available Islay distillery bottlings of comparable age. If I were Ben (and believed that the mo' peaty the mo' better), I might give The Big Smoke try. In fact, I hope he does, which would allow me to bum a dram off of him without investing the money in a whole bottle.

What Is It?

Ben left a message this evening, saying that he was in Spec's, standing in front of McClelland's Single Malt Islay Scotch, and wondering whether he should buy it. It's too late to do Ben any good tonight, and I suspect that he's more proficient with Google and consequently knows everything that I am about to write about this whisky and more. But I need material, and he fortuitously presented me with this topic.

McClelland's is an old Glaswegian Scotch blender bought by Morrison-Bowmore in 1970. There is not now nor has ever been a McClelland's distillery, which means that the single malts bearing the McClelland's name are all rebadged whisky. I know that this will come as a shock to everybody, but Morrison-Bowmore also owns the Bowmore Distillery on Islay. Bowmore is their only Islay property, so it's highly likely that the Scotch in this bottle was distilled at Bowmore. The Wikipedia article about McClelland's claims that the Islay is 5 year old Bowmore, but it does not give a source for that claim. Despite this lack of support, I can believe it. Bowmore Legend is six years old and costs around $22 a fifth. McClelland's Islay costs around $20 a bottle, so logic would dictate that it's slightly younger than Legend. Given its provenance and its cost, I think it likely that Ben would be reasonably happy with its quality/price ratio (which, for him, is equivalent to the peatiness/price ratio).

Last Night's Tipple

Bunnahabhain and Bruichladdich have the reputation for being the atypical Islay malts. Where the other five (plus Kilchoman) are all peaty, Bunnahabhain and Bruichladdich are not. Or, at least, they have not typically been since the early '60s. Bruichladdich has been experimenting with higher peat levels recently (including such peat monsters as the Port Charlotte and the Octomore), and, to a lesser extent, so has Bunnahabhain (pronounced Bunna-haaven, more or less) since Edrington sold it to Burn Stewart in 2003.

Bunnahabhain is one of two distilleries located on the east side of the island on the Sound of Islay (Caol Ila, located to the south of Bunnahabhain, is the other). Founded during the Golden Age of Scotch in 1881, it probably has the lowest profile of any of the Islay distilleries, never really having been marketed aggressively as a single malt but rather serving as a major blending malt for such mass market blends as Cutty Sark. Unlike most of the other Islay distilleries -- indeed, unlike most of the other Scotch distilleries throughout the country -- it has had a remarkably stable ownership. Its corporate parent has merged with others several times, but until the 2003 sale, the distillery itself had never been sold. Like most other Scotches, it began life as a robust, peaty malt, but it lost its peat by the middle of the 1960s as the world's tastes lightened. With the exception of two experimental runs of peaty whisky in the '90s (one in 1991, the other in 1997), Bunnahabhain was completely unpeated from the '60s until Burn Stewart started experimenting again in 2003.
In addition to being unpeated, everything about the Bunnahabhain distillation process is geared towards producing a light, clean whisky. Unique to Islay, the water used is crystal-clear spring water (most people agree that water doesn't have that much influence on the character of the whisky, but to the extent that it does, one would expect that peaty loch water as is used by the other distilleries would produce a marginally heavier whisky than clear spring water). The wort undergoes a very slow fermentation, the object of which is to produce a clear, acidic wash, both of which properties tend to make for a lighter, cleaner spirit. The still charges (ie, the percent of capacity that the stills are filled with either wash or low wine) are the lowest on Islay, producing more copper contact and a lighter, cleaner spirit. Also tending to increase copper contact are the shape of the stills (tall) and the speed of distillation (slow). And the spirit cut is relatively narrow, meaning that more of the congeners that make whisky heavy are left out.

In light of all of this, I expected my newly-purchased Bunnahabhain 12 year old to be peat-less, light, and sweet. I was surprised to find that this wasn't entirely the case. It's sweet, all right, but there's peat. I wouldn't go so far as to call it peaty, but there is noticeable smoke on the nose. The only thing that I can figure out is that some of that peaty 1991 run whisky is included in this bottling. The nose also has some nuttiness, probably due to sherry casks. Bunnahabhain uses some sherry casks, unlike most other Islay distilleries. I also get vanilla, which isn't typical for Scotch and which I can't figure out. Spirit caramel, maybe? That would make sense, especially because the whisky is much darker than most Scotches of its age. I don't know. Overall, this is a pleasant whisky, although for my money, I'd rather buy Bruichladdich.

Oh, and with this tipple, I have now tried whiskies from all of Islay's functioning distilleries (except for Kilchoman, which just started up and is extremely small, anyway). Rejoice!

What Should Ben Drink?

Ben writes in his comment to Sunday's post about JMR's The Rich Spicy One:

Hear hear!

I just bought my second $30 bottle of the Smokey Peaty One, and am enjoying it about as much as a medium-peat Islay like Laphroaig. Did I mention it was only thirty bucks?

If they exit the US market, I will quite literally be poorer for it.

What should Ben do? We don't want him taking food from Princess J's mouth to blow it on expensive liquor, but we don't want him drinking dreck, either. Obviously, he should buy as much of JMR's The Smokey Peaty One as he can find, but there are other options for peaty whiskies in the same general price range. Let's first examine what's in The Smokey Peaty One (according to Dave Robertson's e-mail to Kevin Erskine of the Scotch Blog):

• Caol Ila 5% refill casks - ex American oak bourbon barrels
• Laphroaig 12% refill casks - ex American oak bourbon barrels\
• Bunnahabhain 17% American oak sherry
• Bunnahabhain 9% refill casks - ex American oak bourbon barrels
• Highland Park 26% Spanish Oak Sherry butts
• Highland Park 14% American oak hogsheads
• Ledaig 9% refill casks - ex American oak bourbon barrels
• Bowmore 8% refill casks - ex American oak bourbon barrels

Caol Ila currently runs around $50 a fifth for the 12 year old, which is the youngest version generally available. Laphroaig 10 is maybe $40 a fifth. Bunnahabhain is famous for being unpeated, despite its Islay location. Ledaig is the peated malt produced at the Tobermory distillery on the Isle of Mull; it's not easily-found, and in any case, it's not cheap. That leaves Highland Park and Bowmore. Both have potential. Bowmore Legend is around 8 years old, and peatiness decreases with age. It might be worth a try at around $22 a fifth. Highland Park is peated, although it does have lower peat levels than big boys like Laphroaig and Ardbeg. Still, it is one of the best whiskies in existence, and the 12 year old version retails for maybe $32 a fifth. Other possibilities include Dalmore's Cigar Malt, at $32 a fifth; and Isle of Jura Superstition, at around $35 a fifth. I'm not much of a fan of either one, but Ben might like them.

Last Night's Tipple

Like most other Scotch distilleries, Bowmore has had some very hard times in its past and has more than once barely escaped being shut down forever. It is the oldest remaining distillery on Islay and in fact was the first licensed distillery on the island, founded in the town of Bowmore, which came into being in the late 18th Century when the island's laird evicted the residents of town of Bridgend to make room for his Versailles-style gardens, leasing them land in Bowmore in compensation. The distillery's first heyday was during the middle of the 19th Century. A disputed sale in 1894, mismanagement, depression, and two world wars produced an extended run of bad times that lasted until the Morrison family bought Bowmore in 1963 and began something of a revival, one of the most significant aspects of which was the hiring of Jim McEwan, who eventually rose to be the distillery manager. The Morrisons sold out to Suntory, the Japanese spirits conglomerate, and Suntory has not been bashful about giving Bowmore the financial resources that it needs to be successful.

Bowmore's malt is peated to 25 parts per million phenols, which means that it is significantly less peaty than Ardbeg, Laphroaig, or Caol Ila. Its bread-and-butter bottling, Legend, is also younger than most other Islay regular bottlings: 8 years old. Since peatiness decreases with age, I would guess that Legend competes in peatiness with the others, though. I purchased the sherry-finished bottling that Bowmore calls Darkest. Late last year, Bowmore decided to rationalize their lineup, which meant that they eliminated some bottlings and changed the age range for others. As part of this they moved Darkest from a 12 year old to a 15 year old. I'm almost positive that I have one of the older bottlings, though, because it has gold instead of copper on the label (and as part of the rationalization, Bowmore also changed the labels to use copper instead of gold printing). It is indeed very dark for a Scotch. At first, though, the nose is all peat. After a while, though, the peat burns off to reveal sherry-like sweetness and nuttiness. I had wondered how I would like the combination of savory and sweet that a sherried Islay malt would figure to have, and the answer is that I like it a good deal.

Bruichladdich Redux

In response to last night's post about Bruichladdich, commenter The Laddie (and with a username like that, he must be a Bruichladdich enthusiast) writes:

For some strange reason, which turned out to be most fortunate, in the summer of 1998 Bruichladdich was reoppened and distilling recommeneced for a few months under the Jura team management. This stock has been invaluable to the distillery as a stepping stone during that closed period.

He's correct, and I was wrong. Andrew Jefford writes in Peat Smoke and Spirit (p. 175):

Between 1994 and 2001, Bruichladdich had only ever worked for six weeks in 1998, when Jim Beam Brands brought the distilling team over from Jura. Interestingly, it was not classic, barely peated Bruichladdich (3 ppm) that was distilled then, but between 100,000 and 120,000 litres of a peaty spirit (at about 38 ppm), which was filled into good casks, including some sherry butts.

Some cruising on the Bruichladdich website reveals that some of this 1998 peated spirit made its way into Bruichladdich's 3D bottlings, which combine whiskies of three different peat levels and which have been tremendously successful for the distillery. It would be interesting to taste, both because of the peat level and because some of it was aged in sherry butts. I just can't get my head around what sherried peated malt would taste like -- certainly a mixture of savory and sweet.

Last Night's Tipple

It seems that every other distillery in Scotland has a harrowing story about how it cheated death more than once. Given the great whisky bust of the late 1890s, government-mandated closures during the World Wars, hard times during the Great Depression, and the second great whisky bust of the late 1980s, this is not surprising. Bruichladdich has endured more than its share of hard times, most recently between 1994 and 2001, when Jim Beam Brands decided that the Isle of Jura distillery was more valuable than it and that there wasn't a place in their brand portfolio for both. Given the quality of Bruichladdich's whisky, this seems like a ridiculous miscalculation today.

For its present owners, that seven-year silent period makes things difficult. Whisky is not like beer or wine or vodka or white rum; you can't sell any of it for years after it's produced. This means that the present owners (who, being independent, don't exactly have deep pockets) have to finance present production and aging with the stock that they bought with the distillery in 2001, but that seven year silence before they took over makes selling bread-and-butter 10 and 12 year old bottlings difficult. Do the math. The whisky of those ages is gone and cannot be had again until 2011. Stocks of older whisky still remain, but bottles of Scotch over $50 are a hard sell. Necessity is the mother of invention, and the owners have introduced a number of interesting variations to help keep the money flowing. Among them: Octomore, the peatiest whisky in the world, with the 2003 version clocking in at over 129 ppm of phenols (Laphroaig is typically around 45 ppm), and various non-traditional wood treatments like ex-d'Yquem casks. Their efforts have been remarkably successful, making Bruichladdich the darling of the whisky press and a favorite of Scotch geeks, er, enthusiasts.

As for me, I finished my bottle of 10 year old last night. It is a shame. It's fantastic whisky, elegant, creamy, and malty. Bottles of the 10 year old can still be had, but they're around $50 a fifth now. That's a lot of money, even for a profligate spender like me. And I do like to experiment...

(Incidentally, the comment from Armin in the post about Black Bottle is absolutely correct. There are 8 distilleries on Islay. Kilchoman is a microdistillery that recently started up operation near Bruichladdich on the Rhinns, the western portion of the island.)

Edit: See the followup to this post.

Last Night's Tipple

It can often be a significant challenge to figure out who actually owns a whisky brand (or any spirits brand). The world of spirits has been in almost perpetual flux, and that flux has increased in tempo since the great spirits conglomerates began a wave of consolidation in the 1990s. One would buy another (or two equals would merge) and then sell off some of the brands that overlapped in the united portfolios. Keeping straight who owns what is difficult, especially since corporate parents sometimes like to obfuscate their parentage to give the brand an image as a lonely, small, independent producer. Better romance that way, you see.

And so it was that it took me a good deal of digging to figure out which conglomerate owns Black Bottle, a blended Scotch whisky that has the unique distinction of including whisky from all seven operational Islay malt distilleries. Black Bottle is a venerable Scotch blend, having begun life in Aberdeen in 1879, the property of the three Graham brothers, who had begun their commercial life as tea blenders and merchants. The blend was a success (remember that the late Victorian period was the golden age of Scotch), and the brothers eventually abandoned tea blending and concentrated on Scotch blending. The company remained in Graham family until 1964, when it was sold to Lohn John, another blender. Over the next two and a half decades, the Black Bottle blend fell upon hard times and became a shadow of its former self. It was sold to Allied Distillers in 1990 and began its revival. Here's where the confusion begins. I presume that Allied Distillers was a division of Allied Brewers, which later became Allied Lloyd. Allied Lloyd merged with Domecq in the mid-'90s to form Allied-Domecq, which in turn was bought by Pernod-Ricard in 2005. At the time of the Pernod-Ricard purchase, some of the former Allied-Domecq brands were sold to Fortune Brands and to Diageo. The Black Bottle blend is now owned by Burn Stewart Distillers, which is a division of CL WorldBrands and it is blended and bottled at the Bunnahabhain distillery on Islay, which Burn Stewart also owns. The question is, how did it get there? So far as I can tell, Bunnahabhain was never owned by Allied, Allied-Domecq, Pernod-Ricard, Fortune Brands, or Diageo, and I have never seen mention of Burn Stewart purchasing any brands during this series of acquisitions that I summarized above. So, unfortunately, I am clueless about this.

Black Bottle has two expressions: the regular bottling and the 10 year old version. Both have the claim to fame of being the only blends that have malts from all seven operating Islay distilleries. The standard bottling is 80 proof, and the 10 year old is 86. I have the 10 year old version. It's a testament to just how much peated Islay whiskies can dominate anything that they are blended with. The nose is smoky and peaty, and I swear that I could smell Laphroaig and Lagavulin. It's lighter on the palate than a malt Islay, though, and there is some grain whisky sweetness, too. A very nice dram, especially if you like peated whisky.

Last Night's Tipple

I am currently reading Andrew Jefford's book Peat Smoke and Spirit: A Portrait of Islay and Its Whiskies, which is a travelogue cum history cum whisky tasting book of Islay. I have to admit that the chapter in which he describes the terrain of the various regions of the island is not the most interesting thing that I have ever read, but the chapters about the history of the island and its residents and about the seven distilleries still active on Islay are enjoyable.

Ardbeg is the first distillery that Jefford discusses. It lies on the south coast of Islay (along with Laphroaig and Lagavulin), and it dates from 1798. By 1880, it was the most productive distillery on Islay, producing 250,000 gallons of whisky a year. Like most malt distilleries, Ardbeg suffered hard times during the Depression and World War II, closing from 1932-1935 and again from 1939-1945. After the war, the distillery passed between a couple of different owners and was on the verge of closing in 1978 when Allied-Domeq bought it. The problem was that Allied-Domeq also owned Laphroaig and consequently had limited use for Ardbeg whisky -- remember that this was during the period before the emergence of single malts, when all malt whisky was destined for use as blendings; the character that Laphroaig and Ardbeg would bring to a blend are largely similar. The result of this was that Allied-Domeq only ran Ardbeg a few days a year to produce what little they needed, and they allowed the distillery to fall into disrepair. They sold it to Glenmorangie in 1997, and Glenmorangie began a comprehensive (and expensive) program of rehabilitation. Two of the most important of these (at least to the character of the whisky) are the rationalization of the wood aging regime and the standardization of fill levels in the stills. Before Glenmorangie bought Ardbeg, new-make whisky went into whatever barrels happened to be on hand; now, it mostly goes into first-fill or second-fill used Bourbon barrels. Because Allied-Domeq only ran Ardbeg a few days a year, they wanted to maximize their yield for those days and consequently overfilled the stills. This reduces copper contact with the spirit, which in turn makes for a heavier whisky. Glenmorangie reduced the fill level and thus lightened the whisky Ardbeg makes.

Speaking of lightness, that's not a word one usually associates with peated whiskies. But Ardbeg's operation is geared toward producing light whisky. Relatively small fills of the stills has this effect. So does the presence of purifiers on the lyne arms of the spirit stills, the lamp-glass shape of both the wash and spirit stills, and the relatively narrow spirit cuts. All of this increases contact between the spirit and copper, which allows the copper to react to impurities in the spirit and this filter them out. So Ardbeg is something of an anomaly: a lighter, peaty whisky. When you first nose the 10 year old bottling, it's all peat smoke and bacon. That blows off after a little while to reveal a fresh, malty whisky. It was very enjoyable, more so than I remember it.

(Incidentally, my bottle was a gift from Ben and Sara from a few years ago. This means that its contents were distilled during the Allied-Domeq reign; and you can tell it from the extremely pale color of the whisky, which is a result of them using old barrels that had little color left to impart. It will be interesting to try the newer Glenmorangie-made whisky, which should be coming onto the market within the next year or so. This should be more deeply-colored and wood-influenced, lighter, and more peaty due to some innovations that Glenmorangie has brought to mashing that increase the quantity of phenols that make it from the malt to the wash.)

Last Night's Tipple

Islay whiskies enjoy quite a following among Scotch enthusiasts for a number of reasons, I think. There are only seven Islay distilleries, and bottlings from all seven are readily available in the United States if one expends a little effort and a bit more than a little cash. This means that it's possible to sample and become familiar with all seven without Herculean effort, something that's just not possible with, say, Highland Scotches or Speyside Scotches. With their peatiness, Islay Scotches stand out apart from the crowd. They're extremely distinctive -- a mellow Speyside like Glenlivet has a flavor profile that shares more similarities with Canadian Whisky than it does with a peat monster like Ardbeg. And, let's face it, there's a bit of posturing one-up-manship among Islay enthusiasts. Peaty whiskies are MANLY in the same way that extra-hoppy beers are manly. At a subconscious level, I think that many Islay drinkers like the fact that they can handle a peaty, briny whisky that the vast majority of spirits drinkers would spit out.

Among Islay enthusiasts, Caol Ila has developed quite a bit of a following in recent years. Despite the fact that the Caol Ila distillery produces more Scotch than any of the other Islay distilleries, it's less well-known than Bowmore, Laphroaig, or Ardbeg. It's also harder to find because most of its production goes to the blenders. Aside from the novelty and rarity factors that appeal to snobs, however, it also has a following because it's very good. As is typical of Islay, the 12 year old has a big, peaty nose and a briny palate. But there's more to it than that. With some time in the glass, the nose mellows out a bit, and a big dose of malt comes through. Too, it goes down smooth and gentle, completely without the gasoline-like properties that some other Islays have. It's a beautiful, complex whisky that has merit outside of its Islay category. I can see why it is so popular with the blenders: it offers a big dose of smoke, but it's not one-dimensional.

Having sampled Clynelish and Caol Ila independently now, I will see how they behave when blended together tonight, a la Compass Box Eleuthera. Wish me luck: neither one of these is cheap enough to pour out lightly, so I hope I get something drinkable.

Last Night's Tipple

Bruichladdich (pronounced, more or less, like "brook-laddie") is an anomaly in more ways than one. Modern Scotch whisky-making is dominated by multinational corporations and marketing experts, but Bruichladdich is independently owned and for the most part eschews the marketing hooey that afflicts spirits of all kinds but Scotch whisky especially. Once shut down, distilleries are rarely revived, but Bruichladdich was brought back from extinction when a group of buyers including a former manager of Bowmore distillery and former representatives of independent Scotch bottler Murray McDavid bought the distillery, which had been silent since 1993, from Jim Beam Brands. And Islay whiskies are supposed to be toe-curlingly peaty, but Bruichladdich is not always (although they are capable of producing some of the peatiest whiskies in the world and do, on occasion). In fact, if you placed a glass of Bruichladdich 10 year old in front of someone who knew something about Scotch but was not intimately familiar with Bruichladdich and its Scotch, it's highly unlikely that he would identify it as an Islay. But an Islay it is, and one of the great ones. It's fresh and malty on the nose, and that same maltiness comes through on the palate, along with a mouth-watering creaminess. There is some smoke and some brine, but it is not overpowering. It is a fresh, clean, enjoyable spirit. If I were stranded on a desert island and could only have one bottle of Scotch with me, that bottle would be Highland Park 12 year old. If I could have two, the second would probably be Bruichladdich 10 year old. It's exactly what a Scotch should be. Drinking whisky should be pleasurable, not a test of one's manhood.