The Cabinet met last Thursday to consider a diverse range of whiskies that I will loosely group as "Inner Hebridean": two from Skye (well, one and a half, but more on that in a moment) at the northern extremity of the Inner Hebrides islands and three from Islay, at the southern extremity.
Skye first. Talisker claims to be "the only Single Malt Scotch Whisky rugged enough to call the Isle of Skye its home". It does in fact appear to be the only whisky actually distilled on Skye, although it is owned by London based Diageo. This becomes relevant below when we discuss the Cul na Creagan. We sampled the ten year old and there was universal praise around the table for its complexity, including elements of smoke, peat, leather, brine and spice, and for its lovely long finish.
With the Talisker we also began a new scoring system. Each member was given a stack of playing cards from Ace to 10 wherein the Ace counts as 1. When it was time to score each member would place one of those cards, face hidden from the other members, into a hat. A Laphroaig hat in fact, although this did not bias or skew the results. As Secretary I then calculated an average score. The members were encouraged to use the entire scale from 1 to 10 based entirely on their own overall personal subjective enjoyment of the whisky, with 1 representing the worst whisky they have tasted and 10 the best. Too many ratings sites cluster all their scores in the 80s and 90s. This is not helpful.
The Talisker 10 Year Old received a Cabinet Score of 7.65.
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The next malt was novel. One of our members had the opportunity to pick up a bottle of Cul na Creagan, a blend produced by Praban na Linne for the Opimian Society. The Opinians are wine drinkers who occasionally dabble in whisky and Praban na Linne is a small distiller based in Skye, but who is very cagey about where they actually distill. Their website claims that they are the only distillery "headquartered" on Skye and that they were established to provide employment for the south of the island and to produce an authentic whisky "for the Gaelic speaking islands":
http://www.gaelicwhisky.com/index.asp
The "visit us" link takes one to an invitation to visit the office and shop. Complete silence regarding the distillery. The Cabinet's Chair has reason to believe that the actually distillery is in fact in Edinburgh.
Be that as it may, what of this whisky itself? Well... the Cabinet liked the old school bottle very much and the fact that the label featured a long un-translated statement in incomprehensible Gaelic, but the whisky itself was, in a word, unimpressive. This is not to say that it was unpleasant to drink, just uninteresting. There is simply nothing going on here other than malt and alcohol. A disappointment, but still good to have in our stocks if only for the rarity and the interesting story.
Cul na Creagan received a Cabinet Score of 3.7.
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On to Islay. This was an excuse to do a comprehensive tasting of the Laphroaig line. We tasted the Quarter-Cask, the flagship 10 Year Old and the 18 Year Old. There is little or anything to fault with these fine whiskies. Achieving both complexity and balance is an art and one that Laphroaig excels at. There is not much point in me spending time outlining all the familiar flavour components of these whiskies (yes, peaty; yes, smoky...), but I will point out the differences. The Quarter-Cask and the 10 Year Old are very similar, but the former struck me as a touch sweeter, which makes sense when one considers the higher wood surface to whisky volume ratio present in a smaller cask. The Quarter-Cask is also considerably hotter at 48% versus 43%. The 18 Year Old is another animal entirely with the "yes, peaty; yes, smoky" becoming more of a "maybe, peaty; maybe, smoky" as those elements mellow out, revealing a layer underneath of moss and cereal and caramel and salt. Very nice indeed.
The Cabinet Scores:
Laphroaig Quarter-Cask = 6.85
Laphroaig 10 Year Old = 6.9
Laphroaig 18 Year Old = 7.85
The astute reader will notice that the Talisker out-scored two of the Laphroaigs... The Members later commented that they actually preferred the Laphroaigs but as the Talisker was the very first to be assessed under this system they had not yet calibrated their scoring properly. Keep that in mind.
Otherwise it was a splendid evening. Conversation ranged over the sexual depravity of penguins and the carnivory of muskies to the idyllic notion of a Cabinet trip to Scotland.
Slainte!
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Skye first. Talisker claims to be "the only Single Malt Scotch Whisky rugged enough to call the Isle of Skye its home". It does in fact appear to be the only whisky actually distilled on Skye, although it is owned by London based Diageo. This becomes relevant below when we discuss the Cul na Creagan. We sampled the ten year old and there was universal praise around the table for its complexity, including elements of smoke, peat, leather, brine and spice, and for its lovely long finish.With the Talisker we also began a new scoring system. Each member was given a stack of playing cards from Ace to 10 wherein the Ace counts as 1. When it was time to score each member would place one of those cards, face hidden from the other members, into a hat. A Laphroaig hat in fact, although this did not bias or skew the results. As Secretary I then calculated an average score. The members were encouraged to use the entire scale from 1 to 10 based entirely on their own overall personal subjective enjoyment of the whisky, with 1 representing the worst whisky they have tasted and 10 the best. Too many ratings sites cluster all their scores in the 80s and 90s. This is not helpful.
The Talisker 10 Year Old received a Cabinet Score of 7.65.
.JPG)
The next malt was novel. One of our members had the opportunity to pick up a bottle of Cul na Creagan, a blend produced by Praban na Linne for the Opimian Society. The Opinians are wine drinkers who occasionally dabble in whisky and Praban na Linne is a small distiller based in Skye, but who is very cagey about where they actually distill. Their website claims that they are the only distillery "headquartered" on Skye and that they were established to provide employment for the south of the island and to produce an authentic whisky "for the Gaelic speaking islands":http://www.gaelicwhisky.com/index.asp
The "visit us" link takes one to an invitation to visit the office and shop. Complete silence regarding the distillery. The Cabinet's Chair has reason to believe that the actually distillery is in fact in Edinburgh.
Be that as it may, what of this whisky itself? Well... the Cabinet liked the old school bottle very much and the fact that the label featured a long un-translated statement in incomprehensible Gaelic, but the whisky itself was, in a word, unimpressive. This is not to say that it was unpleasant to drink, just uninteresting. There is simply nothing going on here other than malt and alcohol. A disappointment, but still good to have in our stocks if only for the rarity and the interesting story.
Cul na Creagan received a Cabinet Score of 3.7.
.JPG)
On to Islay. This was an excuse to do a comprehensive tasting of the Laphroaig line. We tasted the Quarter-Cask, the flagship 10 Year Old and the 18 Year Old. There is little or anything to fault with these fine whiskies. Achieving both complexity and balance is an art and one that Laphroaig excels at. There is not much point in me spending time outlining all the familiar flavour components of these whiskies (yes, peaty; yes, smoky...), but I will point out the differences. The Quarter-Cask and the 10 Year Old are very similar, but the former struck me as a touch sweeter, which makes sense when one considers the higher wood surface to whisky volume ratio present in a smaller cask. The Quarter-Cask is also considerably hotter at 48% versus 43%. The 18 Year Old is another animal entirely with the "yes, peaty; yes, smoky" becoming more of a "maybe, peaty; maybe, smoky" as those elements mellow out, revealing a layer underneath of moss and cereal and caramel and salt. Very nice indeed.
The Cabinet Scores:
Laphroaig Quarter-Cask = 6.85
Laphroaig 10 Year Old = 6.9
Laphroaig 18 Year Old = 7.85
The astute reader will notice that the Talisker out-scored two of the Laphroaigs... The Members later commented that they actually preferred the Laphroaigs but as the Talisker was the very first to be assessed under this system they had not yet calibrated their scoring properly. Keep that in mind.
Otherwise it was a splendid evening. Conversation ranged over the sexual depravity of penguins and the carnivory of muskies to the idyllic notion of a Cabinet trip to Scotland.
Slainte!
.JPG)
I am an Opimian member from Canada with a recent interest in Scotch Whiskey (3 or 4 years now). I have ordered some Cul Na Creagan on two consecutive Opimian offerings and find it to be pretty good although my favorite is The Macallan. The label on Cul Na Creagan says it is a blend of single malts which confuses me. I thought whiskey was either blended or single malt whereas this brand seems to represent both. Can anyone clear this up for me?
ReplyDeleteJohn
I'm sorry to have missed this comment - somehow I'm not being automatically alerted... In any case, all blended whiskies are blends of single malts. The others just avoid muddying the waters like the Cul Na Creagan has done. In the past the so called single malts were almost entirely produced to supply the blending houses. No upstanding Scot would drink something so primitive as the original source "single malt" whiskies that went into making the blends he enjoyed, no more so than you would ask a chef to deconstruct his stew for you and serve you the individual ingredients. Times and tastes have changed!
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