Port Charlotte Valinch MAC01 Whisky Review!

A distillery-exclusive, hand-filled Port Charlotte at cask strength. But what is an MAC, you may ask? Well that would be a Madeira cask, and a full maturation single cask no less!

Thanks to the continuing global pandemic, many of the special bottlings that were previously exclusive to distillery visitors have been made available to a wider audience. Bruichladdich were one of the first to do this when they began selling some of their hand-filled Valinch bottlings on their website - but only by ballot, which is really the only fair way to do it when these are often less than 300-400 bottle releases. Larger distilleries have started doing the same with their Feis Ile bottlings - Lagavulin and Caol Ila, for example - but they're open to everyone to purchase, provided you or at least your shipping address is located in Great Britain. I noticed too that Bowmore Distillery's Feis Ile bottle being sold online in 2021 is still labelled as a 2020 bottling, which is fair, and just goes to show how unpredictable the world has been over the last 18 months or so. But I also hope that once things are closer to normal the distilleries and their owners will also return to keeping these special bottlings as distillery exclusives. Having these Feis Ile and distillery exclusive bottlings more widely accessible only makes it easier for the dreaded & inevitable flippers and scalpers that were already trying to hunt them into extinction. It's only fair that visitors to these often remote and sometimes rugged places are rewarded for their efforts in making the pilgrimage, particularly when they've come from further afield - like, say, Australia, for a completely random example - and normally have an almost zero chance of accessing bottles like these. They're often the icing on the cake, the cherry on top of the sundae, when you've made the pilgrimage to your favourite distillery/distilleries and can buy yourself a souvenir to take home. 

The Valinch bottling that I'm looking at here pre-dates these issues. It's from a time when travel was unrestricted, and holidays, vacations and whisky pilgrimages were still being planned, anticipated and enjoyed. Although that's difficult to imagine at the moment! As with all of Bruichladdich's Valinch bottlings, both in unpeated Bruichladdich form and heavily peated (40 ppm) Port Charlotte form, these are 500ml bottles of cask strength, hand-filled single cask whisky that are specifically selected to be sold from the distillery shop. There are plenty of people who baulk at the idea of a 500ml bottle of whisky, particularly here in Australia where it's a very common thing, but they're often missing the point - 500ml bottles mean the price is generally a little lower than it would be at 700ml, and more importantly it means that there is an extra 30-40% more bottles available than would have been otherwise. So it helps to "share the love" a little more - helping to lower the likelihood of experiencing the crushing disappointment that comes from visiting your favourite distillery and finding that they've sold out of their distillery exclusive or limited release bottling. For that reason alone I wish more distilleries would move to 500ml bottles with single cask bottlings, although I suppose that's the advantage Bruichladdich enjoy by having their own bottling line, they have more flexibility than the larger distilleries who need to ship their whisky to the Scottish mainland for bottling. There are only two bottling lines on Islay, remember, one at Bruichladdich and one at Kilchoman, while almost everyone else sends the vast majority of their whisky to their parent company's bottling plant/s on the mainland. 

This hand-filled Port Charlotte Valinch has been fully-matured in a single Madeira cask, cask #3836, yielding 411 x 500ml bottles - so that cask was probably a 225-250 litre hogshead. MAC:01 was distilled in December 2008 and bottled in mid-late 2019 at a hefty cask strength of 62.6%. Naturally it's non-chill filtered and naturally coloured. There have only been a handful of Madeira cask-matured Bruichladdich/Port Charlotte/Octomore whiskies to date, and most were single cask releases or independent bottlings that are few & far between - but with one exception. The legendary, brilliant cask strength PC6, bottled way back in 2007, was partly-matured in Madeira casks, with bourbon casks making up the rest of the vatting. I reviewed PC6 here along with the equally-legendary PC5, but in summary PC6 is still my favourite Port Charlotte to date. So this fully-matured single cask, despite being bottled 12 years later when the distillery's styles have evolved, and when it has a different Head Distiller and a different owner under Remy Cointreau, was impossible to resist. Madeira is a fortified wine produced on the island of Madeira off the coast of Portugal, although it's actually closer to Morocco. Traditionally the wine was matured in oak casks that were cooked or baked by the heat of the sun, known as the Canteiro method, which is still in use today, albeit only for the higher quality wines. Cheaper wines are heated in stainless steel or concrete tanks to mimic the process and generally don't spend any time in wooden casks. The heating of the wine causes it to oxidise, and also stabilise, giving it a different flavour profile and also a longer shelf life than most other fortified wines. Much like sherry there is a wide variety of different styles of Madeira, from dry to sweet with a few stops in between, although the acidity that is found in all Madeira wines prevents the sweeter varieties from becoming overly sweet or cloying. We don't know which type of Madeira this cask held previously, but I would assume it was headed towards the richer & sweeter variety - known as Malmsey. Whatever it was, it's certainly worked! 

Port Charlotte Valinch MAC01, 10-year old, 62.6%. Islay, Scotland.

Distillery exclusive hand-filled single cask. Distilled 12/2008, fully matured in a single madeira cask, bottled mid-late 2019. 411 x 500ml bottles, cask #3836. Non-chill filtered, natural colour. 

Colour: Bright copper. 

Nose: Sweet, fruity, smoky, and lightly acidic. touch of 'laddie lactic "funk" - think creamy & sour natural yoghurt. Port Charlotte's trademark BBQ smoke and sweetness. In other words, brilliant. Char-grilled & caramelised stone fruit, buttery date sauce, salty burnt bacon with a lemon wedge, and a tin of old boot polish. Touch of balsamic vinegar and dry, spicy wood smoke. Roasted salted nuts and chunky, earthy peat further on. What a nose!

Texture: Medium-heavy weight, rich, syrupy and lightly acidic. Touch of heat but it fades very quickly - and this is a 10-year old whisky at 62.6%, remember!

Taste: Powerful & gentle at the same time. Very well balanced and layered between floral & fruity sweetness, warming peat smoke, and light acidity. Touch of under-ripe strawberry, fresh lemon wedges, and more caramelised stone fruit. Date syrup and a touch of warm ginger. 

Finish: Long length. Dry, ashy smoke and a touch of astringency to start with, then that grilled sweet stone fruit & fresh lemon, and a flash of the balsamic vinegar and burnt salty bacon again. Chunky, earthy, muddy peat with warm spicy BBQ smoke, lactic & citrus-y acidity and bright sweet fruitiness. 

Score: 4.5 out of 5. 

Notes: What a whisky! And in particular, what a nose! There's so much depth, so many layers, and it's constantly shifting and changing with each pass. Certainly one of those whiskies that I'd be happy to nose for hours on end before tasting. On the palate it's beautifully rich & balanced, with sweetness, smokiness and acidity all getting along beautifully. It's not as peaty or dirty or farmyard-y, nor as overtly coastal as the earlier Port Charlottes, but they were all younger as well, and this 10-year old isn't as aggressive as they tended to be - despite being higher in strength. It's also from a different era of Bruichladdich distillation, of course. I'd argue there's more consistency these days, although the 'laddie character is still here in spades. That beautiful sweet, smoky Port Charlotte spirit is still showing itself, and the balance between the fresh, bright youthfulness and carefully monitored cask influence is spot on. The peat & smoke influence itself does seem slightly more subdued - only slightly, though - in comparison to most of the younger cask strength bottlings of Port Charlotte, but after ten years of maturation in a first-fill madeira cask this Valinch MAC01 is on a different playing field. And it's winning!

Each & every one of these Bruichladdich & Port Charlotte Valinch bottlings is very special, since they're single casks that are hand-picked as a special souvenir for distillery visitors - and they're a great reward to those who have made the pilgrimage. But as with all single cask whiskies, some are more special than others. If the stars aligned and you got yourself an MAC01, you're well ahead of the curve. In fact, I hope you bought two!!

Cheers!