Octomore 2.2 Orpheus Whisky Review!

My original bucket list dram, my original holy grail whisky, and the starring whisky of my 40th birthday celebration - which is well behind us now! This was the third-ever Octomore official bottling, released nearly 16-years ago now. Seems a good way to celebrate this humble site passing one-million views - which is also well behind us now. I still had to mark the occasion!

Rare "bucket list" whiskies that we aim to tick off the wishlist before we kick the bucket. They're usually legendary bottles that we've seen or heard about online or in bars & bottle shops which are either relatively rare, or are beyond our personal reach at the time. All whisky nerds have at least one - more often many - of these that are ingrained in our brains from the early days of our whisky adventures. Our bucket lists are like a whisky bottle-shaped version of the Hydra from Greek mythology; you cut off one of the beast's heads only for two more to take its place. If a bottle on said list is actually available when it first catches our eye, then it's beyond our reach for some reason - either due to pricing or relative rarity, or both. Said whisky is then placed somewhere near the top of the bucket list in the hope that circumstances will change and we'll eventually get our hands on one. More often though we catch wind of a bottle while trawling online reviews & Instagram posts when we're first falling into the whisky rabbit hole, only to find that we've missed the boat and said whisky is already legendary, is only sporadically available on the secondary auction market, and is already selling for multiple-times its original pricing. Personally, the latter is far more common. When I fell into the rabbit hole properly around 2012-2013 there were three on my list; the original Ardbeg Supernova from 2009, Port Charlotte PC6, and Octomore 2.2 Orpheus. No prizes for guessing which were my two favourite distilleries back then! Those three bottles may seem like low-hanging fruit for the readers who have been deep in the whisky world for decades longer than I, but these bucket lists depend on when we are first engulfed by the obsession and what our circumstances are at the time. Over a decade later I've now been lucky enough to taste and own bottles of all three, and like the bottle-shaped Hydra mentioned above they've since been replaced on my bucket list by a myriad of others, most of which are rarer and much more valuable than those initial three. Regardless, I'm privileged to have tried them, and while not necessarily the "best" whiskies that I've tried so far on this adventure, none of the trio have been disappointing in any way. They've lived up to my high expectations - click the subsequent links for earlier reviews of 2009 Ardbeg Supernova, and for Port Charlotte PC6. 

The last of the three to be ticked off my original bucket list, and the last of the three to feature on this amateur whisky blog, is the legendary Octomore 2.2 Orpheus. This was the third official release of Octomore, following after 1.1 and 2.1, with 2.2 being bottled 16-years ago back in 2009. The inaugural Octomore 1.1 was released in 2008 in the opaque black bottle & tall black tin that are now iconic, while 2.1 landed roughly a year later with the same bottle design but in a rectangular cardboard box - the only boxed Octomore so far - and 2.2 Orpheus arrived in the same year in the regular black bottle but with some red labelling and a bright red tin - the only red-tinned Octomore so far. Right from the start the Octomore numbering system has remained the same, where the _.1 bottlings are ex-bourbon cask matured, and the _.2 are either partially- or fully-matured in ex-wine casks. Octomore 2.2 Orpheus was the first of these. The first _.3, denoting an Islay-grown barley release, didn't come around until 6.3 landed in 2014, and the first _.4, denoting either partial- or full-maturation in virgin oak casks, arrived with 7.4 in 2016. There have also been a few 10-year old releases, Feis Ile bottlings, "Futures" bottlings, and a couple of other special releases and single cask bottlings, but they've been excluded from the regular numbering system. 

The other numbers that everyone loves to hear about with Octomore are of course the ppm figures, which Bruichladdich successfully turned into an Islay arms race in the late 2010s. See here for more information, but as a brief reminder, these ppm figures are a measure of the phenolic content (speaking very broadly; the level of peat and/or smoke) in the freshly peat-smoked malted barley, measured in parts-per-million. This does not reflect the phenolic content of the distilled spirit or the final whisky, with every subsequent step in the process - from milling to maturation and everything in between, will reduce that figure - the generally accepted rule of thumb is that around 60-70% of the phenolic content is lost, but with Bruichladdich using longer fermentation and narrow cuts in tall stills, that would likely reduce even further, not to mention maturating in active casks. Which is why most Octomores are bottled at only 5-years of age; to keep more of the phenols intact. Another important reminder is that Bruichladdich don't use Islay peat in their whiskies, they use mainland peat in all expressions including the Islay barley releases, where the Islay-grown barley is shipped to the mainland for malting at Bairds in Inverness. This mainland peat gives different flavours than Islay peat would, generally more earthy and less medicinal, but don't get me wrong, these are still very peaty whiskies! Ppm figures for the earlier Octomores were huge compared to all competitors at the time - the barley for 1.1 was peated to 131 ppm, and both 2.1 and 2.2 were peated to 140 ppm, while the highest competitor, Ardbeg Supernova, was "over 100 ppm". Since those early days Bruichladdich have dwarfed their own figures with 309.1 ppm in Octomore 8.3 (reviewed here), 307.2 ppm in 15.3, and 258 ppm in 6.3 (reviewed here). 

Octomore 2.2 Orpheus was the first to feature ex-wine casks, which were a staple at Bruichladdich back then, just as they are now, but they were far less common in Scotch whisky in general back in the late 2000s. For 2.2 Orpheus the entire batch was finished for an undisclosed period in ex-red wine casks, but these weren't just any wine casks. Unlike today, back then Bruichladdich were happy to disclose the source/s of their wine casks for each release, often naming the individual wineries on the packaging. For Octomore 2.2 those were ex-red wine casks from legendary French winery Chateau Petrus, which dates back to 1837 and is located in the Pomerol area of the Bordeaux wine region. Petrus wines are predominantly made from Merlot grapes and are among the most expensive wines in the world, ranging from thousands of dollars at retail to hundreds of thousands of dollars at secondary auction. While we're talking prices, Octomore 2.2 currently ranges from £500 to £700 at the largest online auction in the UK, with a bottle appearing in their monthly auctions roughly 3-4 times a year. That hammer price would easily equate to over $2,000 AUD once landed here in Australia. Closer to home you're looking at $1,500 AUD at auction plus the 10% buyer's premium and postage, but there's only been one bottle listed for sale in the last two years. That's quite an expensive 5-year old whisky, particularly one that was bottled "only" 16-years ago, and with a large release of 15,000 bottles. Octomores aren't cheap whiskies, and Orpheus is the most legendary of the early releases, probably more so than the inaugural 1.1 release. My bottle of 2.2 is now empty, but I was lucky enough to have the tin signed by Jim McEwan on his most recent visit to Australia, which you'd think would make it harder for me to open the bottle - but no! The ABV for 2.2 Orpheus was 61.0%, and it is of course non-chill filtered and natural colour. The name "Orpheus" refers to a hero from Greek mythology, a magical singer, poet, and musician, who travelled to the Underworld in an attempt to rescue his (deceased) wife from Hades. He was later killed by followers of Dionysus, the god of wine & festivity. Octomore 4.2 "Comus" was named in a similar fashion, but they've since moved away from the Greek mythology references. Now, on to the whisky!

Octomore 2.2 'Orpheus', 5-years old, 61.0%. Islay, Scotland.

Released 2009. Barley peated to 140 ppm, finished in Chateau Petrus red wine casks. Non-chill filtered, natural colour. 15,000 bottles. 

Colour: Polished copper. 

Nose: Huge chunky, earthy, tarry peat. Strawberries in quality balsamic vinegar, apricots & nectarines behind that. Soft leather & polished old wooden furniture, smoked sea salt. Touches of olives in chilli oil, and creamy yoghurt with black cherry. Turkish delight, orange dark chocolate, and fresh road tar. 

Texture: Heavy weight. Big, viscous, oily, rich. And peaty! Slight heat initially as you'd expect for a 5-year old whisky at 61%, but it breathes off quickly. 

Taste: Peaty, fruity, smoky. Huge chunky peat again, spicy & ashy peat smoke, fresh road tar. Smoked & sweet paprika, black pepper, and BBQ-grilled stone fruit - peaches, apricots, nectarines. Big waves of fresh tar and chewy dark chocolate fudge. Touch of liquorice straps. 

Finish: Very long length. Very, very long. More strawberries in balsamic vinegar, touch of cocktail onion acidity, and the salty whey that mozzarella is packed in. Fresh oranges, smoked sea salt, touch of black cherry jam. And the peat, tar, and ashy smoke never quit!

Score: 4.5 out of 5. 

Notes: Fantastic whisky. Without doubt my favourite wine-influenced Octomore to date, and there have been quite a few of those! Yes, Orpheus easily beats both 4.2 and 8.3 in my book. Wine casks and peat don't always get along well; see most of the Longrow Red series and also Octomore 9.2 for some bad examples. But here the peat & wine casks are almost evenly matched, and they've worked extremely well together. Octomore 2.2 Orpheus is now jostling with 6.3 and OBA for the number one spot in my personal top three Octomores of all-time. Although the Feis Ile 2025 'Polyphonic' bottling is also in the running now. Orpheus has an incredible texture and huge volume of flavour, and it's a great example of the magic of Octomore at just 5-years of age. A 5-year age statement might be more common and more acceptable now, but in 2009 such a thing was basically unheard of, and at 61% ABV many would've expected a full-on assault on the taste buds. In fact many would've turned their noses up and overlooked this dram altogether. But that's the beguiling nature of these earlier Octomores, neither the level of peat influence, the young age, or the high bottling strengths, are as aggressive as you might expect if you only looked at the numbers and took them at face value.

I can absolutely see why Orpheus enjoys the reputation that it does, and it does belong on every peated whisky fan's wishlist just like it was on mine. I'm very lucky to have been able to get a bottle 15-ish years after putting it on my bucket list, and I'm very glad that I opened it and shared it on my 40th. I sometimes struggle to open unicorn bottles like this, since they tend to be almost irreplaceable, but I have no regrets here. This is a hero I'm very glad to have met!

Cheers!