Longrow Red 11 Year Pinot Noir Cask Matured

N: Surprisingly gentle smoke, sour berries, pine, resin. P: cane sugar unripe strawberry and raspberry, lingering peat. Lovely balance between sweet, sour and smoke.

Longrow Red 11yr Pinot noir N: sweet smoke and funky peat. There’s some really nice wine and grape notes that come through on the back of the nose with a little vanilla and wood. I’m reminded of a mulch smell in the spring. P: ash, peat, plum, old moldy oak and more mulch. It’s surprising salty and wild. I feel like there’s notes of grapes, vanilla, cookies, chocolate and more but it’s so complex and powerful. F: long, woody and funky but not in a dusty way, in a rotten earthy mulchy way that so weird but so nice. This is stupid how unique it is.

Nose: (Neat) Beef steak marinated with red wine that has been infused with juniper berries, broiling gently over an open fire. Red currants, cranberries, strawberries and a gentle waft of licorice. Oil of wintergreen in an old rusty pail, standing on a hay bale in a decrepit barn, with dry-rot, mould and manure in the background. Nose: (Watered) Softer and with a good deal more red wine presence. The smoke is slightly dampened down but overall the nose gains unity and cohesion. With time, slight ashy notes appear. An excellent nose. Palate: (Neat) Oily and spicy on the arrival, with fruity notes giving way to some sour peat in the development and a little dark chocolate. Dark plum jam and slightly sour blackberries. The texture is oily, sweet but with occasional dry wood spice intrusions. There is a pervasive salty note, but it's not quite maritime - more like brackish groundwater. Palate: (Watered) A revelation. All of the above together with a mild smoky haze shimmering over a dry and musty maltiness. A smokiness almost reminiscent of cigar smoke. Finish: Medium/long: Spicy, briny oak, fading to a little pepper in the aftertaste. After a long while the remaining presence is of smoked berries. The nose is initially reticent but with time it presents more effusively. Longrow never demonstrates the hefty, brackish in-your-face style of smoke you get from the popular Islay smokey whiskies. It is genteel and poised but with a sense of authority. In a way it is more akin to Orkney's Highland Park then anything from Islay, but where HP is all honeyed char, Longrow is musty farmyard fruit and barbecue. The nose on this Longrow is, in fact, sublime in its balance and continues to evolve throughout the tasting. The palate is similarly complex, so much so that at times it's almost possible to forget that this is a peated whisky. Not that the peat level is too low or shy, it's just that all the other elements provide a perfect counterpoint to the smoke. Like the nose, the palate continues to evolve as you taste, particularly after adding a dash of water (which I highly recommend). It has a fascinating characteristic of lingering, and a good while after you've finished the dram you'll find yourself smacking your lips and thinking what a nice drop it was, as the faint traces of berry jam remain. There is always a compelling completeness to Longrow Red and it's one of my favourite whiskies, being a distillate that teams excellently with red wine finishes. I've collected almost all of the Longrow Red editions to date and this 11 year old Pinot Noir example is one of the most elegant and easy to approach expressions from the range - almost civilized, in fact! "Very Good" : 87/100 (4.25 stars)

After my complimentary comments about the new Ardbeg Blaaack, @ScotchingHard mentioned how much he had enjoyed this other Pinot Noir cask peat bomb, which I recalled I had a sample of. Duly tasted, I can report that this is indeed a good comparator. As with the Ardbeg, the Longrow spirit is enhanced with just a touch of jammy sweetness, integrated seamlessly. The Longrow has a lovely oily mouthfeel, but in general I prefer Ardbeg's earthy peat to Longrow's more aggressive pepper, which is particularly prickly on the finish here. I also found my sample of the Ardbeg had just a touch more of the blackcurrant jam than I tasted here, and was a little better for it. Still, one of the best of the Longrow Reds, and another sign that Pinot Noir plays well with peat when it comes to red wine cask maturations.