Signatory Vintage Caol Ila Whisky Review!

A single first-fill bourbon cask Caol Ila, bottled at cask strength. This dram has been described to me as a worthy challenger to the delicious Port Askaig 100 Proof, so the level of anticipation is quite high!

Selected by Melbourne's The Whisky Company, who are the Australian importer & distributor for independent bottlers (and Edradour owners) Signatory Vintage, this single cask was only sold in Australia, both directly through The Whisky Company themselves, and through Single Malt Whisky Club Australia (singlemalt.com.au - that'll be easy to remember!) as their malt of the month. Established in 2005 and founded by whisky fans Brad Wright and Andy Anderson, the free-to-join SMWCA - for short - is essentially a subscription service that selects one bottling of whisky each month, and then sends it out to their members - with an opt-out option for each bottling via email, of course. Those bottlings have ranged from lesser-known independent bottlings, to small-batch Australian single malts, to rarely-seen whiskies from "new world" distilleries, and of course plenty of very tasty single malts from Scotland. As far as I'm aware the SMWCA was the first service of its type in Australia, and let's remember that our whisky 'scene' would have been very different back in 2005 - whereas it is now at an all-time high, back then you would not have seen anywhere near the relatively huge range of single malts available that we enjoy today. So it would've taken quite a lot of  brainpower and original thinking - and no doubt also quite a lot of whisky - to launch this sort of operation back then.

This Caol Ila is something out of the norm for the SMWCA, though, because this is a cask strength, single cask, heavily peated single malt from the largest distillery on the glorious Isle of Islay. At the relatively young age of nine years, 312 bottles were yielded by this single first-fill ex-bourbon hogshead (re-coopered 250-litre cask), and as is the case with all single cask bottlings, once it's gone, it can never be repeated. It's not a very common thing to find a Caol Ila that has been matured in a first-fill cask either, most - particularly the official bottlings from owners Diageo - spend their years in refill casks, whether they are destined to be blended away in mass-market blended whiskies like Johnnie Walker, or bottled as a single malt. Likewise most of those official bottlings are bottled at 43% ABV, and are chill filtered and occasionally also artificially coloured. There are some exceptions, but unless you're lucky enough to snag a bottle of the distillery's annual Feis Ile or Distillery Exclusive bottlings or the un-peated expressions that are part of the annual Special Releases, you're probably going to need to turn to the independent bottlers for your high-strength Caol Ila salvation. Thankfully it's quite an easy thing to find a good quality independent bottling of Caol Ila, with bottlers like Gordon & MacPhail and Signatory Vintage regularly releasing cask strength expressions from the distillery, as do some of the smaller companies, often in different cask types and with more natural presentation as well.

Caol Ila is often seen as a softer, more gentle entry into Islay's peated malts, and for the standard 12-year old official bottling that's true, but there are certainly exceptions. When bottled at cask strength and without chill filtration or added colouring, this unglamorous (see above photo) and often under-appreciated workhorse of a distillery - producing around four million litres of spirit per year - is certainly capable of producing some absolutely outstanding single malts. It's trademark grassy & malty character, alongside a softer style of peat and smoke offer a lighter and more approachable style than is often showcased by some of the other Ileachs - including its stablemate Lagavulin. But rest assured, this is still very much an Islay whisky. As an interesting aside, both of those Diageo distilleries use exactly the same malted barley, peated to 35 ppm and of course sourced from the company's Port Ellen Maltings, but the resulting malts are remarkably different. That's largely down to the different fermentation times, the size, shape, design and fill level of their stills, and the cut points used during the distillation runs, among other factors. On paper this 9-year old single cask bottling at 57.2% ABV offers one of the best opportunities to see just what Caol Ila can do when it's allowed to shine. Before you ask though, this whisky has already completely sold out from singlemalt.com.au / SMWCA, who kindly provided the sample for this review. So unless you grabbed a bottle yourself, you'll just have to sit back & enjoy the ride!

Signatory Vintage 9-year old Caol Ila single cask, 57.2%. Islay, Scotland.
Distilled 10/2009, matured in a single first-fill ex-bourbon hogshead, bottled 10/2018. Non-chill filtered, natural colour. 312 bottles, exclusive to Australia.

Colour: White wine, very pale - and beautiful for it!

Nose: Yep, it's cask strength Caol Ila alright! Grassy, softly peaty and sweet - but that's a spirit sweetness, not a cask sweetness. There's some lovely fresh malted barley on show, a little vanilla and some sawdust from the cask, a herbal & grassy smoke, and a decent touch of aniseed.

Texture: Medium weight, with plenty of distillery character. Soft & warming with only a little heat.

Taste: Nice, of course! An earthy peaty-ness, much more obvious here than on the nose, but it fades quickly and is replaced by that herbal smoke, more aniseed and those grassy malted barley notes. More sweet spirit with a bit of baked vanilla custard and some buttery oak behind it. Echos of a couple of dried strawberries around the edges too.

Finish: Long. A big pinch of black pepper first, then that aniseed again which also comes back later on. Sawdust again, or maybe pencil shavings, and that lovely golden malted barley grassy-ness - not something often seen in heavily peated malts. A slight hint of meatyness too - like a touch of vegemite. More aniseed, black pepper & grassy spirit to finish.

Score: 3.5 out of 5.

Notes: Tasty stuff, as expected! It's surprisingly malt-forward and spirit-driven for a first-fill cask, in fact I'm not sure you'd pick it for a first-fill - and it's all the better for it! There are definitely shades of the aforementioned Port Askaig 100 Proof here - they're both from the same distillery after all - but this is a sweeter and more rounded malt with more cask influence (the Askaig being refill casks), and more aniseed & pepper. And before you go searching, yes, I gave both the same score! This Signatory bottling is definitely a great example of young, spirit-forward cask strength Caol Ila, with a good balance to it as well. This was clearly a well-chosen single cask, and sold (past tense) at quite a reasonable price no less.

If you've tried the standard 12-year old Caol Ila expression but would like some more power, do yourself a favour and find a bottling like this. They really show a different side to this quiet giant of an Islay distillery, and it's a side that isn't shown often enough!

Cheers!