Octomore 8.2 Whisky Review!

A wine cask-heavy 8-year old travel exclusive official Octomore, released back in 2017 - those years have passed quickly!

It may feel like the Octomore 8 Series has been relegated to the archives since the 11 Series has now appeared in Australia. This constant stream of new releases is getting hard to keep up with - both for the collectors and Octo-heads and also for the importers and distributors! The 8 Series was unleashed upon the world back in 2017, during my maiden voyage to Islay in fact,  the surprising news that three of the four bottlings were actually eight years old! That was a first for an Octomore series and a substantial age difference over the 'regular' five year olds, and aside from the 10-year old releases and unobtainium like Event Horizon and OBA, isn't likely to be beaten. In fact Bruichladdich went straight back to the standard ages with the 9 Series, which also carried lower ppm numbers and far-less explorative cask recipes, and thus didn't get anywhere near the attention that its predecessor enjoyed. Aside from the increased ages in the 8 Series, there was of course one special drawcard in the four bottlings - Octomore 8.3, which carried the highest ppm count of any Octomore at 309.1 ppm - on the malted barley, remember - and was the 8-series release that stayed at five years of age. Naturally release received the lion's share of the attention, but the other releases in this series were also very good - 8.1 is still my favourite _.1 Octomore since the mighty 5.1, and while the virgin oak-influenced 8.4 wasn't as "out there" as the ground-breaking 7.4 it was very tasty regardless. While every bottling series in the world of whisky will always have highs and lows, I'd have to say that the 8-series was one of those rare cases where all of the bottlings were definitely winners. 

One of the four bottlings had proven a little harder to track down, however. As it always is, since the _.2 releases have been "travel exclusive" - only available from duty free stores - from 6.2 up until 11.2 at least, and we can thank COVID for that recent change in approach since the world's airports and ports aren't what they once were, and won't be anytime soon. Let's hope this global tragedy sees a few distilleries and brands re-think their approach to duty free bottlings, hopefully towards making them more readily available without the need for international jet-setting. Bruichladdich's Australian distributors have actually done that with the Laddie Eight that is normally travel exclusive, with it replacing the entry level Laddie Classic in many stores. And I'd argue that the delicious Eight is a significantly better deal, so that's certainly a win for the 'laddie fans! The _.2 releases have always stood apart from the rest of the Octomore range. That's partly due to the availability of course, but also due to their maturation - mostly due to wine casks being involved to varying degrees. The first of these, the legendary 2.2 Orpheus, was finished - Additional Cask Enhanced in Bruichladdich-speak - in Chateau Petrus red wine casks, while the highly-regarded 4.2 Comus was finished in Sauternes dessert wine casks, followed by the Cognac / Brandy cask-finished 6.2. Then the delicious and wildly-unappreciated 7.2 arrived, which was a mix of ex-bourbon and ex-Syrah red wine casks, matured separately and married together rather than a cask finish. 8.2 is much more complex, so it'll be covered in the next paragraph, while 9.2 was finished in second-fill red wine casks with the use of second-fill being a first for a _.2 Octomore. While tasty, in my opinion it is or rather was the low-point in the _.2 Octomore history. But the sauternes cask finished and 8-year old 10.2 was the redeemer that also broke the mould, since while easily the least-peaty Octomore I've tasted to date, is an absolutely delicious whisky in it's own right. 

My first encounter with 8.2 was on Islay, in the Laddie Shop at the Distillery, and it had only just been released - so recently in fact that there was only one bottle available to taste, and it was kept hidden away from the thirsty punters until the bottling hall had caught up. I must admit here that my memory of this particular dram is a little hazy - after a distillery tour and warehouse tasting, followed by a couple of other samples in the shop including the hand-filled Valinch bottlings and the delicious 7.2 for posterity's sake, adding in the sheer emotion and excitement of the first visit to these hallowed grounds, so I had not given 8.2 the attention that it deserved. But now, nearly four years later, and thanks to a generous sample from a fellow whisky nerd, I'm able to right that wrong! This 8-year old travel exclusive Octomore has had a very complicated and very wine-heavy upbringing. With the barley peated to 167 ppm and the spirit distilled back in 2008, the spirit was filled in to three different types of wine cask: French Mourvedre, an intense, tannin-heavy and peppery 'full-bodied' red wine, un-named Austrian sweet wines, and French Sauternes sweet wines. The spirit spent around six years in those three varieties of wine cask, before being married together and finished / additional cask enhanced for a further two years in another type of wine cask: Amarone, which is a dry Italian red wine. So that's basically six years in three different types of wine cask, and another two years in a fourth type of wine cask. I told you it was wine-cask heavy! Bottling strength on this one was 58.4%, with a generous 36,000 bottles released, and no chill filtration or added colouring involved of course. The sample for this review came from a sample swap with a generous fellow-whisky nerd. Let's do it!

Octomore 8.2, 8-years old, 58.4%. Islay, Scotland.

167 ppm barley, distilled in 2008. Matured in French Mourvedre, Austrian sweet wine and French Sauterne sweet wine casks for 6 years, finished in Italian Amarone red wine casks for 2 years. Travel exclusive, 36,000 bottles. Non-chill filtered, natural colour.

Colour: Deep copper. 

Nose: Smoked bacon, black pepper and stone fruit. Sweet apricots & nectarines in syrup, with a couple of sour cherries and a few peach skins thrown in for good measure. Buttery over-cooked pancakes with smoky maple syrup. A little spicy oak & green chilli heat. 

Texture: Heavy weight. Very rich, oily & syrupy. Lightly ashy and a touch of heat. 

Taste: Sweet & smoky entry with that smoked bacon and black pepper, then that syrupy stone fruit comes through to soften things up. That's followed quickly by an ashy, earthy peat, green chilli heat, black pepper & wood spices, plus blow-torched orange rind. 

Finish: Long length. The green chilli heat & ashy peat carry through, then the black pepper with a touch of astringency. Torched orange rind again, then the stone fruit in syrup with the smoky maple syrup sweetness, and warm, spicy toasted oak. 

Score: 4 out of 5. 

Notes: Delicious. It's different, and it's slightly hot, but it's packed with flavour, and the texture is wonderful - even with that slight heat. And to be fair, Octomores are rarely gentle! In 8.2 the peat & smoke are tamed slightly by the fruit and syrupy sweetness, while the chilli and oak spices are still assertive, but it all works very well together. There was something special about the 8-series of Octomores if you ask me, and the 8.2 shows a sweeter and fruitier side to the foursome. All four bottlings did set the bar quite high, and subsequent series' have certainly had some big shoes to fill! While there have been some excellent stand-out bottlings in those more recent series', and while I'm yet to taste any of the 11-series bottlings, I'd say that the 8-series was a rare case of all four releases being absolute winners!

Untasted, I was a little wary of the amount of wine casks that were involved in 8.2's maturation - even more so since it had spent eight years in those casks rather than the usual five. But I should've known better, because Bruichladdich are basically the masters of wine cask maturation, and Octomore tends to work very well with them. It's just a shame that most of these extra-unconventional _.2 bottlings are exclusive to travel retail / duty free stores. Octomore and Bruichladdich fans are being deprived of a different, but no less essential, aspect of Octomore and Port Charlotte, especially given the current global situation. The distillery did take steps to correct this with the recent 11.2, which was sold directly from their website - although neither DHL or Australian Customs are shy about taking advantage of those situations! As for these older bottlings, I suppose the advantage is that they're likely to still be available from some Australian airports, despite being bottled a few years ago now. So maybe that's an advantage? We'll have to wait for a certain virus to finally bugger off to find out...

Cheers!

Tamdhu Batch Strength Whisky Review!

Tamdhu has recently popped up in Australia, and at very reasonable prices from a certain large retailer. So this cask strength, sherry cask-matured example was hard to pass-up - and if memory serves it's my first dram from this distillery!

At first glance, Tamdhu (Gaelic for "little dark hill" and pronounced "tam-doo") seems like many of the lesser-known Speyside distilleries where most of their production goes to blended whiskies - it's not a very interesting one. In fact even the distillery's own promotional material puts almost 100% of its focus on the casks use for maturation, with almost no mention of the distillery itself or the spirit that it produces. But once you delve a little deeper, there is actually a little history there. Founded in Knockando, east of the town of Craigellachie in 1897 by none other than William Grant himself, it was designed by famous distillery architect Charles Doig, who was responsible for the "pagoda" roofs (real name Doig Ventilators) that have become synonymous with whisky distilleries in Scotland - although they seem to be missing from this distillery! It wasn't exactly smooth-sailing from there, with the distillery closing in 1927 while under the control of Edrington-predecessor Highland Distillers, and staying that way for twenty years. Soon after re-opening the distillery's original floor maltings were replaced with ten Saladin malting boxes, which explains the lack of Doig ventilator / 'pagoda' roofs. Saladin boxes are large open-topped containers that can hold over 20 tons of barley each, and use a mechanical system of pulley-driven screws to turn the barley as it germinates, thus cutting out most of the manual labour from the malting process. Tamdhu was among the first to adopt these Saladin boxes, and put them to good use by supplying 100% of its own malt requirements, and some of Edrington's other distilleries as well - notably Highland Park and Glenrothes. This also meant that Tamdhu was for a long time one of the few distilleries of the modern-era to supply 100% of its own barley requirements in-house, although that ended with the most recent change of ownership, when the maltings were decommissioned and the barley externally sourced from commerical malting companies, as is unfortunately the modern way. 

Edrington closed Tamdhu again in 2009, before it was purchased by Ian McLeod Distillers in 2012 - who also own Glengoyne Distillery, and produce a multitude of blended whiskies and independent bottlings such as Isle of Skye, Smokehead, Six Isles and Sheep Dip. They're also now the owners of the mighty Rosebank, which they are bringing back to life after its closure back in 1993. Since Tamdhu changed hands in 2012 the distillery has been rebranded with more emphasis put on a larger range of single malts, along with new updated packaging, a new visitor's centre and additional warehouses. Their current annual capacity is around three million litres of spirit, produced in nine wooden washbacks and six copper pot stills, and stored in a mix of dunnage, racked and palletized warehouses. While the decommissioning of the maltings facility is a shame, Tamdhu that was distilled prior to 2009 - so a good portion of the bottlings that are available today - will have been distilled from this in-house malted barley, so it's not out of reach just yet. These days the distillery's main point of difference is that they exclusively use sherry casks to mature their spirit, mainly of the ex-Oloroso sherry variety, including both American and European oak. The current range of single malts include a 12-year old entry-level bottling, a limited release 15-year old, and the NAS 'Batch Strength', along with some scarcer limited releases. There are still quite a few independent bottlings around, mostly from the likes of Gordon & MacPhail and Cadenheads, although that's likely to dry up after the change in ownership. 

The Tamdhu that we're looking at today is one of many non-age statement, cask strength sherry cask-matured Speyside single malts that you'll find on Australian shelves these days - think along the lines of Glengoyne Cask Strength, Glenfarclas 105, Glendronach Cask Strength and Aberlour A'Bunadh, with Glenrothes and Macallan also dabbling in the same territory at times. These are all batch releases, with the number of bottles per batch being undisclosed, and using different varieties of sherry casks - or more accurately, sherry seasoned casks, usually refill. This Tamdhu is no different, although they do state that a "high proportion" of the Oloroso sherry casks used were first-fill casks, and that both American and European oak casks have been used. Based on the smell and taste though, I'm going to guesstimate that the majority were refill American oak sherry casks. This bottling is from Batch 004, bottled in 2019, which was the first to be officially imported into Australia and was bottled at 57.8% ABV. It's non-chill filtered and naturally coloured, which also applies to the aforementioned 15-year old. This Batch Strength bottling is priced very well in Australia at $114 AUD, although it's only available from a certain large retailer which has directly imported the brand for its own distribution. That price does put this Tamdhu in line with the likes of the Glenfarclas and Glengoyne options mentioned above, and quite a way below the current pricing of the Aberlour and Glendronach examples - both of which are now sitting north of $150 AUD. The Tamdhu Batch Strength has been getting quite a bit of attention since its arrival, and it makes for a very interesting comparison between those other high strength 'sherry bomb' options. Time to get into it, then!

Tamdhu Batch Strength, Batch 004. NAS, 57.8%. Speyside, Scotland.

Bottled 2019, matured in ex-Oloroso sherry casks of both American and European oak. Non-chill filtered, natural colour.

Colour: Medium amber. 

Nose: Apricots & vanilla cream, with sweet nectarine and white peach in syrup on the side. Spun brown sugar toffee, white pepper, clove and ginger spice. A touch of orange zest, vanilla fudge and some fresh oak. A bit of nippy heat still there as well. 

Texture: Medium weight. Syrupy and sweet, still a bit of heat here too. 

Taste: More syrupy sweet stone fruit - nectarine, peach and apricot again. Fresh ginger chunks, vanilla cream and punchy spices - clove and pepper again plus some dried red chilli flakes here. Charred oak and that brown sugar toffee in the background. 

Finish: Medium length. More vanilla cream and charred oak, a nice touch of coffee grounds. Then spirit-y heat - even 3-ish months after opening. It does fade though, leaving more dried fruits now - currants and dried orange slices. Toffee again too. 

Score: 3 out of 5. 

Notes: It's a tasty whisky, but it's hot in places and bordering on harsh on occasion - particularly on the finish. And this bottle has been open for more than three months, with the level being below the shoulder almost the whole time, so it's had plenty of time to breathe and settle down. And it has calmed down a little, but there are still flashes of rawness at times. It actually feels like it's been rushed, which is a shame, but it's not uncommon in this style of high ABV non-age statement sherry cask / "sherry bomb" scene. Glenfarclas 105 in particular can be downright harsh & fire-y in the right batch - or rather in the wrong one! And even contemporary batches of A'Bunadh can be very hot at times. While it's at the top of the price scale, I still think Glendronach's NAS Cask Strength series are the pick of this bunch - but I'd have to suggest that you skip Batch 7, unfortunately it was the low point of the batches that I've tried to date. I'm yet to try its replacement in Batch 8, but from the reports I've seen things seem to have picked up again to where they left off with Batch 6, which is a relief. 

This Tamdhu is certainly a pleasant experience though, and the value for money is commendable - this bottle is around $40-50 AUD cheaper than the Glendronach I mentioned above. Luckily there's still plenty of flavour alongside those (temporary) flashes of spirit-y heat, with delicious sweet fruit, vanilla and bright sweetness showing through nicely. I still think it was mostly American oak casks in the mix (but all ex-Oloroso, remember). And the stone fruit on the nose and palate are the highlights of the show. If you're a fan of these high ABV, rough & ready sherry cask whiskies then this one won't disappoint - in fact it's sweeter and brighter than most of it's stablemates. 

Cheers!

Daftmill Winter 2007 Whisky Review!

My first review of Scotland's smallest whisky distillery, which is sadly impossible to find in Australia.

Daftmill is a relatively young distillery located in the upper reaches of the booming Lowlands whisky region, roughly an hour's drive north of Edinburgh near the town of Cupar, Fife. I say relatively young because the distillery was actually built in 2003 and began distilling in late 2005, which puts it at roughly the same age as Islay's Kilchoman. But Daftmill waited until mid-2018 to release their first single malt whisky, at 12-years of age - which is positively ancient for any distillery's first release! This tiny farm distillery is owned by two brothers, Fraser & Ian Cuthbert, who decided to start keeping a small amount of their barley crops aside for use in their own distillery. That makes this one of the few 'farm distilleries' in the world that is growing their own barley on site, although the barley is sent away to Alloa to be malted before the milling and mashing takes place back in Fife. This really is a tiny distillery, since they only produce for two three-month seasons per year, one in winter and one in summer, in order to fit in with the peak farming seasons. Combined with just two washbacks and two small copper pot stills, that gives the distillery a capacity of roughly 90,000 litres of spirit per year, with an actual production of around 20,000 litres - which makes even Edradour look massive in comparison! That's closer to the output of a distillery here in Australia, and is absolutely tiny in Scotland - to give you a frame of reference, Bruichladdich has a production capacity of around 1,000,000 litres of spirit per year, while monster Glenfiddich hits around 13-14,000,000 litres with plans afoot for further expansion. The seasonal production at Daftmill would've been much more common in the early days of distillation in Scotland, since the farm distilleries had to fit in with the farming seasons that provided the bulk of their livelihoods, and used the leftover grain from their fields in their spirits.  

This very small production has had an unfortunate effect on the  worldwide pricing and availability of Daftmill's whisky. Despite being distributed by relatively large company Berry Bros & Rudd, there is no Australian importer for this much-lauded Lowlands single malt, so the closest option at the moment is Whisky Galore in Christchurch, New Zealand, who receive tiny allocations directly from Britain, and to their credit also keep the pricing quite reasonable. Even if you are quick enough and lucky enough, when coupled with shipping across the Tasman and the ever-looming greed and malice of the Customs department here in Australia, that price does escalate, and the same goes for personal imports direct from the UK - again, if you're quick enough and lucky enough. Some liquor stores in the UK have kept their pricing in the rational realm, while some have taken advantage of the huge demand and tiny supply and have increased their profit margins. But we can't really blame those resellers, because the secondary market for Daftmill, in the European auction sites, eBay and both licensed and unlicensed flippers, is disgusting. While the original retail pricing in the UK ranges from roughly 85-125 pounds depending on the bottling and cask type, which is not cheap to begin with, on the secondary market you're looking at 200-450 pounds, and even beyond in many cases. The buy-in point for a vatted release (as in, not a single cask) at 46% in the recent auctions tends to be around 160 pounds, and that's not including the buyer's premium, handling/storage fees, shipping charges and local customs charges. That's a massive leap over the original pricing, and just goes to show what a massive demand there is for this tiny operation's single malt, and I can't see it changing any time soon. 

I must admit that having watched this unfold over the last couple of years, plus the lack of an Australian distributor, I had resigned myself to missing out on tasting any of Daftmill's whisky for the foreseeable future, if ever, and had become a little jaded about the whole situation. But thankfully, a good friend was lucky enough to nab a bottle from the aforementioned store in New Zealand, and he was also generous enough to share it! Daftmill's wash is fermented for 72-96 hours, which is quite a long period, followed by slow distillation in those small stills that promote reflux, and the resulting spirit is very much suited to the expected style of the Lowlands region, with a light, delicate, floral profile - despite being double-distilled rather than triple-distilled, comparisons have even been drawn to the mighty Rosebank - that seems to show a great deal of maturity at relatively young ages, which is a sign of both good quality spirit and the use of good quality casks. The release that we're looking at today is the Winter 2007 batch, meaning it was distilled somewhere in November-February 2007. This bottling was drawn from six first-fill ex-bourbon barrels, and was bottled in 2020 at 46% ABV, with an outturn of 1,685 bottles. Rather confusingly there are multiple releases of each batch, i.e. multiple different releases labelled Winter 2007, and there don't seem to be designated batch numbers, but on the back label you'll find the individual cask numbers that made up the vatting for that particular release. In this case they were 40-42/2007 and 44-46/2007, making this the Winter 2007 batch for Asia, which makes sense since the bottle was sourced from New Zealand. All of Daftmill's single malt is non-chill filtered and naturally coloured, and most releases to date have been matured in first-fill casks of either ex-bourbon or ex-sherry varieties. Shall we?

Daftmill Winter 2007 (Asia Release), bottled 2020, 46%. Fife, Scotland.

Distilled 2007, matured in first-fill bourbon barrels, bottled 2020. Cask numbers 40-42 & 44-46/2007. 1,685 bottles. Non-chill filtered, natural colour.

Colour: Gold.

Nose: Grassy, floral, sweet & sour. Fresh cut grass, touch of natural yoghurt, cream cheese & lemon juice. With more air the grass becomes dry and the yoghurt fades, leaving lemon icing / frosting, vanilla custard and a little charred oak. 

Texture: Rich, oily & buttery, but also delicate and floral. Very easy drinking. No heat at all. 

Taste: Dry grass and cream cheese again. Sweeter vanilla and less citrus here. Hints of sweet dried flowers (pot purri), light wood spices - sandalwood & cinnamon. Some buttery fresh oak and a touch of dried leafy herbs. 

Finish: Short-medium length, but tapers off quickly - there's the delicacy we were talking about! A touch of spirit here, but not at all in a hot or harsh way, rather a pleasantly light & floral spirit. Hints of that buttery oak and dry grass, a touch of honey and those dried sweet flowers again, followed by subtle vanilla and lemon cream cheese icing / frosting.

Score: 4 out of 5. 

Notes: Delicious stuff. It's aired nicely since that initial opening, with the cask influence fading nicely it's now showing a great balance. Is it "the new" Rosebank? I suppose I can see a couple of similarities if I squint, but they're two different spirits - double distilled vs. triple distilled, and old refill casks vs. young first-fill casks, plus different eras of production, so it's a moot point really. And they aren't competing with each other anyway, both have plenty of merit, and both do stand out among most of their Lowland brethren - some of which are nothing short of forgettable. Although this is my one and only experience with Daftmill so far, the quality is evident. Despite essentially being a part-time operation, they obviously aren't taking any shortcuts - although we could already tell that by the fact that they waited twelve years before releasing their first whisky! 

I can see the Daftmill hype being justified at the original retail pricing, but not at the ridiculous secondary / auction pricing. If you can get a bottle at the RRP, I would suggest grabbing it. But if you can't, don't pay the current rates at auction and retail or private flipping. Paying 2-3 times the original retail for anything that is essentially a current release is just crazy. Hopefully that situation will calm down over time - hopefully! But there's only one way that it will stop, and that's if people stop buying those bottles and stop paying those prices. Then the people that are buying these bottles and immediately putting them up for sale might actually have to keep them and drink them. Oh, the horror!

Cheers!