PORTENT OF DECEPTION

LIGHTLY PEATED

CASK No. 66.196

$350

REGION Highland

CASK TYPE 1st fill bourbon barrel

AGE 10 years

DATE DISTILLED 27 January 2011

OUTTURN 237 bottles

ABV 63.3%

AUS ALLOCATION 42 bottles

The aroma for this one was typical and excellent. Heather flowers, aniseed, herbal cough syrup and mineral oils. Also wee touches of beach pebble, hessian and coal tar soap. Coastal and superbly fresh. With water we found acrylics, some emergent sharp smokiness, chalk, beach foam and bonfire embers. Reduction brought dried herbs, smouldering beach wood, hot smoked salmon and a sharp tang of seawater. A 6 years of age, we combined selected casks from the same distillery. We then returned the single malt into a variety of different casks to develop further. This is one of those casks.

REGION Highland

CASK TYPE 2nd fill Port hogshead

AGE 23 years

DATE DISTILLED 23 October 1997

OUTTURN 253 bottles

ABV 53.5%

AUS ALLOCATION 54 bottles

A stunning nose! We found an immediate density of sweetness, like smoked honey infused with heather ales, wild forest flowers, petrichor and tree bark. The denseness of fatty game meats, damp mosses, earthiness, herbal teas and fragrant jasmine. Water brought a brittle, metallic peat smoke, black pepper, anchovy paste and hessian. The palate was thick and sweet, like aged mead and notes of herbal cough medicines, natural tar extracts and punchy herbal bitter notes - like a 1950s bottle of Fernet Branca. Matured for 21 years in a bourbon hogshead before being transferred to a second fill port hogshead.

Sound Of Singing Sand

PEATED

CASK No. 10.241

$279

Festival Bottling

The Edge Of Midnight

PEATED

CASK No. 53.447

$325

Festival Bottling

REGION Islay

CASK TYPE 2nd fill PX hogshead

AGE 9 years

DATE DISTILLED 17 October 2013

OUTTURN 287 bottles

ABV 58.8%

AUS ALLOCATION 102 bottles

We were all in agreement nosing neat – a bowl full of herby chicken and bacon lardons with a red onion mash next to a green lentil curry. On the palate, we sat on lovely sun-warmed stones at the beach listening to the calming sound of “singing sand” and eating salty crackers with a smoked tuna dip. Dilution delivered an aroma of peat-smoked marshmallows and charred lobster meat combined with an emerging freshness of sea salt and citrus. Following five years in an ex-bourbon hogshead we transferred this whisky into a second fill PX hogshead.

REGION Islay

CASK TYPE 1st fill American oak PX hogshead

AGE 14 years

DATE DISTILLED 27 May 2008

OUTTURN 277 bottles

ABV 57.6%

AUS ALLOCATION 132 bottles

Gorgeously sweet and syrupy peat aromas at first nosing, it was an immediate hit with the Panel. With a little time we also found gallons of natural tar extract, iodine drops, bacon jam and smoky black coffee aromas. The sweetness of long-aged PX sherry mixed with hessian, cocoa and peat embers in a sooty hearth – just gorgeous! With water it became superbly resinous and aromatic, giving off intricate notes of sawn rosewood, smoked paprika, homemade spiced ketchup, lanolin and herbal cough syrups. A waft of pure peat smoke from a kiln.