Ardnahoe Inaugural Release (Islay Scottish Single Malt Whisky: 5 Years: 50% ABV)
Visual: Pale gold with generally slow puckering and a couple of fast streaks coming from the spirit.
Nose: Bonfire smoke. Tarry. Cinder toffee. Coal dust. Vanilla toffee. Moss. Salt touch. Water makes more medicinal. Cleaner smoke. Brown sugar and dried banana.
Body: Sticky. Tarry. Peaty. Salt touch. Dried beef slices. Occasional sweet peach syrup touch. Sherry soaked cake sponge. Toffee. Water adds banana, caramel and oily peat.
Finish: Soot. Milky chocolate. Moss. Sherried fruitcake to sherry trifle. Drying peat. Water makes lightly oily peat. Caramel. Banoffee.
Conclusion: Well, this an inaugural release and a half. I am now so excited about this distillery.
Neat this feels like my favorite style of Caol Ila, the releases where it is a bit tarry and sticky, not as heavy as the big guns of Islay, but wearing the peat and a touch of salt character. If this is the house character they want to show I am down for that. Like this it would be impressive enough for a first release, and a 5 year old one at that, but more is to come.
Give it time to air and sherry fruitcake, sherry cake sponge and trifle notes come out, adding a lovely layer of complexity. Also at some points a touch of peach syrup like notes come out, it is irregular enough that I cant claim it is a main note – heck it could just be an artifact of the events of this specific tasting, but I would be lying if I didn’t mention I encountered it.
Water makes it even more interesting, it smooths the tarry notes that I like, but now there are hints of banana and caramel, and even what I can only describe as light banoffee notes, even though it is far less sweet than that sounds. Under the smoke it now has a slightly more restrained body, with the peat less harsh and more oily.
Overall this is a high quality first release and bodes well for the rest to come.
Background: Ohh a new distillery on Islay, always exciting, and this their first release. A lot of areas sold out quickly but I managed to grab a bottle from “The Whisky Shop” which made me happy. 5 years old, which is quite young, but older than a lot of first releases from new distilleries these days, so was hoping would be something good. Its been matured in a mix of ex bourbon and ex oloroso. sherry casks. Oloroso tend to be a big impact in ageing, so had me hoping. You may noticed this Inaugural release came out quite a while back, yes, I am still doing terrible at getting notes up. My mate had recommended Sleep Token: Take Me Back To Eden recently so put it on as backing music. Seems to be a lot of hate, Ghost like, for Sleep Token from some more traditionalist metal fans online. It seems fine to me, some nice variance in musical genre influences between the songs which is cool, deffo not traditional metal, but fun enough. I love my heavy as hell metal, but there’s room for other stuff as well.
