Kilchoman Rum Finish Single Cask

Kilchoman tasting evening at The Oak Barrel, Sydney, June 25th 2019: Whisky #6 Tasted from bottle 177/241. Cask filled 7 April 2011. Bottled 20 February 2019 Nose: The first impression is of dark fruit (dried dates and figs crusted with natural sugars), treacle tarts and a light hint of rum. This is quickly followed by fruity smoke that continues to expand throughout the tasting. Then spice tones appear - cinnamon, vanilla and caraway. The nose shifts its focus as it unfolds, with layers of aromatic fruit, smoke and spice building over a caramel and malt foundation. Palate: The arrival is sweet and smoky and it's hard to say which is the dominant note. Then an array of fruit and nuts arrives - dates, figs, apricots, sultanas, almonds and orange peel all stewed in a sauce of honey, cinnamon, nutmeg, and cardamom. Vanilla caramel appears with a little chocolate as the palate moves towards the finish. The texture is rich, warm and enfolding - somewhere between creamy and oily. There are sweet sugary notes and little hints of rum throughout but they never become sickly or cloying. Finish: Long, slow, complex and lingering. Fruit compote, toffee, vanilla, milk chocolate and fragrant smoke. A successful whisky of elegant complexity that is also very approachable. Every aroma and flavour is clearly defined but it presents as a coherent whole. It is a little like Machir Bay would be if you could amplify it in every dimension. Like most cask-strength whiskies it is immediately impressive but requires time to fully unfold, and dilution assists this process. I thought it was at its best taken down to a little under 50%abv. The smoky character develops particularly well, evolving from a mild background aroma to an assertive peat-reek with no plastic or rubbery tones. The sweet notes definitely bring rum to mind but they sit comfortably with the distillate. It is a clean and well-defined finish and by no means heavy-handed. Kilchoman has produced several single-cask rum-finish whiskies recently, but they are not at all the same. The versions available at the distillery door and in Europe are slightly stronger and finished in ex-Bajan casks, whereas this version (available exclusively in Australia) was finished in an ex-Jamaican rum cask that provided 241 bottles. Given that the rum cask was most likely originally a bourbon cask this is therefore essentially an 8 year old fully bourbon matured cask-strength whisky with a "seasoning" of rum, and it works brilliantly. I very much hope that Kilchoman continues to explore rum-cask maturation as, for me at least, it suits their new-make spirit very well indeed. I'm the proud owner of bottle number 225. "Excellent" : 88/100 (4.5 stars)