Kilchoman: United Kingdom Small Batch: Batch 5 (Scottish Islay Single Malt Whisky: 49% ABV)
Visual: Pale yellow gold spirit with fast, thick streaks coming from it.
Nose: Wet salty rocks. White grapes. Spirity apple notes. Light dry smoke. Water adds dry sherry and lightly medicinal notes.
Body: Smooth. Smoked meat. Salt and wet rocks. White wine. Malt chocolate. Water makes much more apple flavor. Light red cherries. Light banana soft sweets. Toffee.
Finish: Malt chocolate. Wet rocks. Dry peaty notes. Sour apples. Water adds brown bread. Slightly salty and toffee to fudge.
Conclusion: I am such a sucker for Calvados aged whisky. You see it so rarely that I tend to try and grab and give a try to them whenever I see one pop up. Within my money and liver capacity, natch. The fact that this is a Kilchoman didn’t hurt either – the quality of whisky from this distillery tends to be pretty high.
So how does it do?
For a Kilchoman this is on the lower end of their quality scale – which means it is a perfectly fine whisky by any other metric.
Neat it has that slightly salty, slight peaty Islay character – it is not as pronounced as some other Islay distilleries but definitely distinctly from the region. There is smoked meat, again in a mellow way, with grapes and light apple hints around it. Here the Calvados influence is definitely a small part of the experience.
Water brings out the Calvados with lots more apple like notes, not overwhelming, but now a distinct backing note along with some toffee sweetness. Like this the general gist of the whisky is positive, but there is a neutral breadiness that feels like it lets it down. With that it never full achieves either the quality Kilchoman character, nor the full show of the Calvados, and this ending up kind of neutral.
It is fine as a whisky, enjoyable even, and does give me the subtle Calvados influences that are the reason I bought the whisky, but it fails to really shine overall.
Do you want a reasonable Calvados influenced whisky? Then this is fine, and one of the few that exist. If you are not too bothered about that part then there are many a better dram around.
Background: Well this caught my attention. Kilchoman are a distillery that I have gained a lot of respect for in their short time turning out whisky, and this UK only small batch release caught my eye with its barrel aging breakdown. 70% bourbon, normal enough, 5% Oloroso, ok fair enough, and then 25% Calvados. You do not see much of of Calvados ageing, and it being used here was a big part of why I grabbed this whisky – one of 1,260 bottles that exist. This was another one grabbed from Independent Spirit, they have quite the line up of Kilchomans. Went back to Flipper: Album – Generic Flipper for music, I am very much enjoying that album.
