Douglas Laing: Bunnahabhain: Provenance: 10 Year (2019 Release) (Scottish Islay Single Malt Whisky: 10 Year: 46% ABV)
Visual: Pale greened gold. Slow thick puckering comes from the spirit.
Nose: Lightly oily, in a fish skin way. Salt. Sea breeze. Lime. Seaweed. Sweet syrup. Light menthol mint. Slight pepper. After Eight mint centres. Water adds more salt and wet rocks.
Body: Alcohol warmth but smooth. Honey. Pear drops. Dried beef slices. Vanilla toffee. Water makes smoother, more salt. Moss and honeycomb.
Finish: Honey. Dried beef. Soft sweet lime. Toffee. Water adds honeycomb.
Conclusion: This is significantly different to my last experience with Provenance Bunnahabhain, so I am glad I decided to do notes on it. This one is gently sweet, with the Islay salt and sea breeze character wafting over it.
There is an oily character that is appealing, giving a nice thickness, though neat the alcohol, that also gives weight to it, comes in a tad over warming. Water soothes it out easily though – and it can take quite a bit of water and still work, thought I will admit I feel it works best with just a few drops to take off the heat.
It balances sweet toffee with gentle Islay character. It doesn’t feel full Islay, as is Bunnahabhain’s want it is just slightly salty sea breeze touched, but that is enough here. It remains mostly on the sweet side, and has no harsh edges coming through.
The gentle Islay gets some nice rounding here with lime sweetness and definite honey – all in all a very nice, relaxing, but definitely Islay present drop of a dram.
Background: So, third time around – Mini whisky samples! Woo woo! These were donated to me by Independent Spirit for me to do notes on – much appreciated! Being a sample this is a smaller measure than normal, so may be slightly shorter notes that usual, not that I’m complaining. It doesn’t list on the bottle but I think this is the bottled November 2018 edition. I nearly didn’t do notes on this, as I have done notes on the Douglas Laing Bunnahabhain Provenance 10 Year. Then I remembered these are single cask releases, so good odds it will be significantly different to previous notes. So here we are. Bunnahabhain is the (generally) unpeated side of Islay distilleries, which is odd as I keep getting smoke notes from them in the past. Probably psychosomatic, as I expect smoke when I encounter Islay notes. Anyway… went with Ozzy Osbourne – Memoirs Of a Madman while drinking. Still prefer Black Sabbath in general, but there are some cracking stand-alone tunes.
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