I don’t see that many tasting notes in the Berre and Booze section so though I’d post this here.
I have a small collection of single malts (around 70 different malts) that doesn’t grow much but doesn’t shrink much either. A bottle might get tasted by me every 5 or 10 years, so they last a long time.
A couple of days ago I tasted the Caol Ila 18 again and it showed beautifully - grassy cognac sort of nose, refined on palate, sweet and smoky but not over the top like some of my other faves (Laphroaig, Lagavulin, etc.), with a long smooth finish. Wonderful! Highly recommended!
A bottle of this exploded in my luggage once when I was doing a cross country move for work. I realized as I showed up, suitcase in tow, at my new office. People wondered if I had a “problem.” Shame, as it was good stuff.
When I brought back a half dozen bottles in my luggage, from France, the only one that broke was a white - good luck, but regretted the loss of the wine!
The first Scotch I liked was a Lagavulin, and since then I’ve preferred the Islay malts over the others. A friend gave me a bottle of the Caol Ila 12 which I realize is a much “lesser” bottle, but I’ve really enjoyed the reduced peat intensity while still offering that smokiness. I will try to remember to look for an 18
I took a boat trip in the Hebrides and as we came down the water between Islay and Jura I happened to look over and what did I see but Caol Ila distillery—we didn’t stop, but it was cool to think about the drink being made there and finding its way to my liquor cart 5,000 miles away.
Laphroaig and Talisker are often over the top for those who aren’t really fans of that style but the Caol Ila would probably appeal to them as well as to peat fans. Oddly, it has the same phenol levels as the Laphroaig but I guess it is all in how it comes off in the end.
very hard to find. Really very good too, for me a distinct step up from the still-fine 12 year.
Bit of a tanjink/thread drift, I need to dig up my notes from a tasting a couple months ago where we went through a bunch of the Old Malt Cask 20th anniversary bottling scotches. The unanimous winner there was a 21-year old Arran which is the best single I’ve had in about 5 years.
