Raasay: While We Wait (Scottish Highland Single Malt Whisky: 46% ABV)
Visual: Clear rose wine.
Viscosity: Fast thick streaks.
Nose: Rose wine and glacier cherries. Perfume. Vanilla toffee. Pencil shavings. Stays the same with water.
Body: Smooth, with some alcohol to the middle. Rose wine. Perfume. Malt chocolate toffee drinks. Light wood. Water makes smoother and adds more toffee. Cherry pocked biscuits. More water adds light treacle.
Finish: Light charred wood. Alcohol numbing. Vanilla custard. Water brings out rose wine and light white grapes. Cherry pocked biscuits and light treacle.
Conclusion: This is my second dram of this. I have found that the first pour out of a bottle tends not to be the best, so I have taken to doing notes on the second dram onwards where possible. The first drink came across as quite perfumed, and turned out a bit simple and unappealing – just perfumed frippery.
This dram? Well it is still fairly perfumed, which is not my favorite way of doing things, but not intrinsically bad. The rest of the whisky? Well it has pulled itself up a bit.
The main thing, which I think is also what gives such a perfumed character, is the unusual barrel finishes’ influence. Lots of rose wine styling, lots of cherries. It doesn’t really change that much with water, will get to what does change in a moment, but in general it just gets clearer and a less alcohol touched base to work from.
The main thing that the water does change is bringing out a more recognisably traditional whisky style base. It is much more identifiable as what you would expect with toffee sweetness and a treacle thick set of notes – a more typical expression that the atypical rose wine flavours that they enhance. This pretty good progression – neat it is still too perfumed, this gives it some depth.
So, neat it is still not quite for me, but it is interesting. With water I can appreciate it though – not the fanciest or best put together whisky, but the more traditional feel helps. Though I will say the traditional feel and the rose style notes don’t mesh perfectly, but it manages ok. Hope when they turn out their own whisky they balance it a bit better, but for now it is an interesting enough holding pattern to turn out.
Background: Ok, picking a region for this one was difficult. Raasay is a new distillery on, surprise, the island of Raasay. So, obviously this is under the Island set right? Nope. You see the Raasay distillery has only just opened, their whisky will not be showing up for a long time. This is a mix of peated and unpeated whisky from an unnamed Highland distillery – so that is what I have listed it under. It is also finished in Tuscan wine casks. I k now nothing about Tuscan wine, but it sounds interesting. Anyway, this was grabbed from Independent Spirit and drunk while listening to the odd noise to music ambient thing that is Clonic Earth.
