Last Night's Tipple

Another dram of Bunnahabhain 12 year old last night. Kevin Erskine, proprietor of The Scotch Blog, has written (either there on in his book, I can't remember which) that he knew that he was becoming a whisky expert when he first spelled Bunnahabhain correctly without having to look it up. For me, the key step is not so much learning to spell the name correctly as it is to learn to pronounce it correctly: it's BOON-a-haa-ven. I'm almost as proud to know that as I am to know how to pronounce Bruichladdich (BROOK-ladd-ee). The comparison between Bunnahabhain and Bruichladdich is appropriate for reasons other than the similar difficulty of their names. They are atypical Islays in that they have typically been unpeated or only lightly peated since the 1960s. I have only ever tried the Bruichladdich 10 and the Bunnahabhain 12; but of those two, I prefer the Bruichladdich 12 by a substantial margin. On this second tasting, I still can't tell what the blenders at Bunnahabhain were trying to do. There's a little bit of everything, it seems: a little bit of smoke (yes, Letitia, smoke: this is what happens when you dry malt over peat fires), a little bit of body, a little bit of malt, and a little bit of sherry. Bruichladdich, on the other hand, is better-focused: malty, creamy, and fresh. Don't get me wrong: I'm not going to pour this down the drain. It's just that when I'm in the mood for another unpeated or lightly peated Islay malt, I'll buy the Bruichladdich 10.

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

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.