Tobermory: Ledaig Sinclair Series Roja Cask Finish (Scottish Island Single Malt Whisky: 46.3% ABV)
Visual: Slightly browned gold. Fast, thick streaks come from the spirit.
Nose: Salt. Wet rocks. Dried apricot fruit sugars. Dried smoked beef slices. Peach. Lightly medicinal. Green grapes. Water adds vanilla.
Body: Warming. Fruitcake. Sultanas. Peach. Green grapes. Sour dough. Soot. Wet rocks. Water adds trifle and custard and a salt touch.
Finish: Dry beef slices. Soot. Rose wine air. Beef stew and dumplings. Soft peach. Sour dough. Light oily peat. Smoke. Water adds strawberries. Wet rock. Trifle. More water brings malt chocolate.
Conclusion: This is such a fun one, and one where a touch of visible alcohol edge doesn’t seem to hurt it. It’s because it wears its peat openly, giving a rougher dirtier edge already, so that slight edge fits – and then the base spirit and barrel aging bring such a lovely, subtle soft fruit set of notes against it.
A touch of water lets it find this balance best, but it is still a nice drop without. It wears a touch of alcohol still, oily peat, but gets so juicy smooth flavours, more evident than the more subtle showing neat. The fruitiness seems to somehow defy the big, rough flavours against it and then heads out into a rose wine air floating over the finish.
I’m guessing some younger spirit is in this, especially giving that rougher edge, and the touch more evident peat that often comes with younger years, but as mentioned that seems to work with the whiskies style, and frankly its often worth the slight roughness of younger spirit to prevent losing peat with age.
You want something super polished? This is not it. You want great flavour, peat and a great price, even at the non discounted cost, let alone how cheap I got it? This is great value normally, and an utter steal when discounted. Well worth it.
Background: I first encountered this at a tasting at The Hideout, where they mentioned it was discounted at Sainbury’s at the time, so, since I enjoyed it and it was like, sub 30 quid, I made sure to grab a bottle. Seriously that is super cheap. This is no age statement so probably quite young, with an unusual Roha cask Finish. Ledaig is the peated version of whisky from the Tobermory distillery and I was surprised at the tasting to finish out Ledaig makes up a significantly higher amount of their sales than the unpeated spirit. Tobemory releases its bottlings at a minimum of 46.3% abv, 46% meaning they can non chill filter without it going cloudy, and I guess the extra .3 percent as they find that best. Music wise I went with Curve: Doppleganger. I had missed the band first time around, and only recently heard that they were a big influence on early Garbage, and listening to them, yep that is right, if you had handed me this and told me it was an early Garbage demo I would have believed you – and it is an excellent album in its own right.