Tastes

A bit suprisingly to myself, Caol Ila has become one of my favorite distilleries on Islay. Opened this 2019 Distillers edition yesterday and I am enjoying it a lot! The nose is quite muted but with sweet peaty smoke promising something interesting. The mouth is sweet, smokey oily and quite spicy prickling on the tounge. A long aftertaste that is spice and peat turning vanilla and anise. Yum!

This 15 year old is as of writing the review $47 in the Swedish monopoly, which is a very low price. On the nose it is vanilla sweet with maybe some smoke and honey. The taste is sweet vanilla, honey and some peat which turns into anise and and quite intense oak and pepper. The aftertaste intensifies the oak and has some more of the anise, honey and smoke. This was from a sampler pack, might have to pick up a regular bottle while the price is this good, so far the whole sampler pack has been a pleasant suprise.

Very smoke forward, crazy amounts of smoke! It was a great experience, I wish I’d picked up a second bottle when I had the chance.

It had medium peat kick to it when it was just opened, but now it is too sweet for my liking.

Yum!

This is a complex and thoroughly enjoyable whisky which is quite unique in its profile. Warmly recommended!

A really refined and nice whisky with a lot of sherry and cinnamon spiciness. The bottle has been opened for a couple of months and it just keeps getting better. Bumping this up to 4.75!

This is so good! The proof has changed a few times by the looks of it, mine has the new HP bottle design and is at 60.8%

Turns out I like rye quite a lot!

Spent some more time with this, quite enjoying it now but I still expected it to be more peaty than it is considering the young age. Picking up something faintly reminding of raspberry both on the nose and taste which I think is new to me, the aftertaste has some hints of anise which I really enjoy. It is relatively spicy and quite sweet. Out of the core range it is in the last place. Final update and score lowered. All in all it has been a disappointing experience. I won’t buy this one again.