Smoke By The Water

With apologies to Ritchie Blackmore, the theme of last week's meeting was just too easy to name - smoky whiskies out in my gazebo by the Assiniboine River. Smoke by the water. Cigars and a campfire would have been even better, but you can't have everything.
Having trumpeted the smoke I have to confess though that our first scotch of the evening was the Jura Superstition, which is not notably smoky, but it had just been donated by Cory and Michael and therefore deserved an immediate try. Other reviews mention the smoke, but none of us were able to discern it. That said, we were all otherwise favourably impressed by it. There is a sweetness which in some whiskies would be off-putting, but here it was balanced by an intensity of malt flavour and just enough peat to keep it interesting. The finish was impressively long as well. We did not bring our scoring cards out to the gazebo, so it will go unrated for now, but we will revisit it soon as we also have the Jura Prophecy in our stocks.

On to the real smoke then! First stop, Caol Ila. You cannot open a bottle of this without a pronunciation debate ensuing. I won the debate, but I was wrong. I insisted on "kal eela", but according to no less a source than Esquire Magazine and Scottish actor Brian Cox, it is: http://tv.esquire.com/videos/70184-how-to-pronounce-caol-ila

Oh well. But the whisky, you want to read about the whisky. Caol Ila is certainly a more challenging scotch than say the Jura. It is rougher, rawer and much more given to those classic Islay elements of brine, old bandaids, seaweed and charred tennis shoes. Mmm, charred tennis shoes.... We all either really enjoyed it or were really impressed by it. And yes, there was smoke. Perhaps not so much on the nose as one might expect, but easily detectable in that chaotic melee of flavours.

Next was what we recognized in advance would be a bit of a risk: the Smokehead. The Cabinet is always leery of whiskies that seem conjured by the clammy dead hand of marketing, but the given the theme and given the name... well, you can understand. Also, Smokehead is a specialty bottling of unknown provenance by Ian Macleod Distillers (one of the biggest bottlers of private label whiskies), but most of the speculation appears to point to Caol Ila, so we were keen to suss out that possible connection. Ian Macleod's snappy website for the Smokehead curiously features a prominent ad for Marshall amps and, sadly, the usual thesaurus chewing hyperbole. Take this description of the whisky's alleged body for instance: "Like a cannonball - hits the palate at once with cocoa, peat and some honey sweetness then explodes with peppery spice and more earthy peat." Alarmingly it is also described as, "Contemporary, individual and exciting!" Hmm. There is much to take issue with here. Cannonball? After the Caol Ila, BB pellet would be more apt. It was fine. But just that, fine. Not explosive by any means. Yes, there is smoke and peat and some sweetness, but it all was very, how shall I say...? Dumbed down. Too smooth, too simple. It is an entry-level Islay that has evidently been lovingly branded for a specific demographic. Not our demographic. However, we did very much enjoy mocking the cylinder which was festooned with risible descriptors.

And then finally to.... have you guessed it yet? Which single malt most comes to mind when you think of smoke? The Ardbeg of course. Campfire in a lovely green bottle. Readers of this blog will not need the Ardbeg described in detail to them - it is simply a well-crafted, well-balanced example of a classic Islay malt, right from the nose to the finish. We sampled the 10 year old. 

 Splendid whiskies aside, the highlight of the evening was having James Culleton as a guest. You'll see him in the first two photos diligently sketching and you'll see the resulting blind contour drawing of our group (three members sadly absent) below.
Thank you James for the excellent company and the excellent art! And thank you also Cory for the whisky infused cheddar from Campbeltown, home of our beloved Springbank 10 year old.

Slainte!