Bruichladdich: Micro Provenance Cask Evolution Exploration: Sauternes 2006 (Scottish Islay Single Malt Whisky: 12 Year: 58.4% ABV)
Visual: Light clear gold. Fast thick streaks from the spirit.
Nose: Cloying sweet apricot. Dessert wine. Pears. Grapes. Light rubber. Water adds wine gums sweets. More water adds slight salt.
Body: Pears. Almost evaporates on the tongue. Water brings out dessert wine. Vanilla. Light tannins. More water adds dried banana, more apricot. Even more water adds vanilla and slight salt.
Finish: Pears. Dry. Mineral water. Alcohol air. Water adds vanilla. Toffee. Dessert wine. Wine gums.
Conclusion:This is so strong yet sweet. The expected dessert wine and apricot notes come out from the neat spirit, yet more than that you get subtle pear and grape notes underneath, I’m guessing native spirit characters accentuated by the sweetness to give more complexity than often comes from this sweet and sometimes overpowering barrel aging.
Neat the strong alcohol means that it almost evaporates off the tongue, giving no peat, no salt or any of the expected Islay character. It is clean, slightly rubbery, but with gentle fruit over an impressive alcohol weight but restrained burn. To get the spirit to stick around and to get the slight Islay salt character coming out you need to add a fair amount of water, but don’t worry, it can take it.
Even with water it is so very clean in the spirit character, lots of dry yet sweet dessert wine, and that gentle fruit, with the pear and apricot given more room to roam. The lack of overt Islay character is matched by a lack of lot of the Bruichladdich style. Instead you get lots of subtle complexity from the oak, lots of depth in those sweeter flavours for the water to bring out.
If it had more influence from the native Bruichladdich spirit then I would have no hesitation in recommending this as an absolute stonker. As is it is a very nice show of oak ageing, especially with water, and has wonderful subtlety in its weight.
Background: This was the third of five whiskies at Independent Spirit‘s Uber whisky tasting. I love those things, a chance to try five whiskies I might not otherwise get to try. As always with tastings like this it was in a social environment so I may have been influenced by people around me and the notes may be slightly shorter than usual. Hope you still enjoy. Anyway, this one is from Bruichladdich’s cask experimentation, made with optic barley and aged in the unusual Sauternes which in my experience adds a lot of sweetness to a whisky, so should be interesting seeing how it interacts with the Islay character here.
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