Nc'Nean Quiet Rebels Annabel

Not bad. I have never heard of this distillery before.

Mild, light on the nose. Medium complexity. Notes of fortified wine & sea salt. Very nice indeed

Nc'Nean is one of the few new distilleries that have blown my mind. Their first release, the organic malt, was really surprising. Now they have put away this special yearly expression called "Quiet Rebels". The Quiet Rebels are each one of the workers in the distillery, which are only a handful, and this first expression is also called "Annabel", who is the quite interesting owner of the whole thing. Annabel Thomas was the mastermind and the owner of Nc'Nean; she picked the name, which is a shorter version for the Gaelic Godess-Fairy-Queen-Witch Neachneohain, also called Nicnevin, also known as Gyre-Carling; the queen of spirits, the mother of fairies, the one that loves nature. It is only suitable for that name to be the one picked, since this is the first completely eco-friendly Distillery. Nothing ever goes to waste, and even the incredibly looking bottle is made of re-used glass. This one has a strength of 48.5%abv, and has been matured in ex bourbon, and Hungary's Tokaji wine casks. On the nose, banana bread. Pineapple, spicy. After a couple of seconds, it released a recently baked brownies note. Bee honey, wax, cake and marzipan. It is chocolate powder; like Nesquik. A second sip released yeasty notes. Very, very, very good aroma. If the aroma was good; the palate was out of this world. Chocolate, Brownies, Bee honey  and Hazelnut. In Ecuador we have this banana bits bathed in chocolate from a brand called "Republica del cacao" (translates into cocoa republic). It is exactly that. A third sip gave me marshmallows, that are bathed in a chocolate fondue. Coconut, almonds, milk chocolate. This is a dream dram. Aftertaste was very good. Salty, peppery with hints of ginger. The first sip was fairly spicy; but the second sip changed everything. There is a very mild but incredibly elegant smokey note, reminiscence of tobacco leaf and coconut. Overall, before even tasting it, I thought to myself, "this is going to be good; there is no way the distillery owner will name a bad whisky after herself"; and guess what: it wasn't good, it was FANTASTIC. I even had the Glendronach Yoda on the same tasting night and i can assure you i will remember this dram for ages and maybe ill forget about the "Glendro". My score for this wonderful single malt is a well earned 95 over 100, and maybe it deserved more and i am not been fair here. Slàinte.

(Good Spirits Co. Glasgow – Virtual Sustainability Tasting, 6th November 2021). Nose: Vanilla, floral, hay, caramel, candy/toffee apple Palate: Sweet, apple, burnt toffee, candied fruit Finish: Medium long finish. Sweet, icing sugar, toffee apple and pear. Some light wood on the aftertaste. A lovely sweet and summery dram. There are a lot of layers of flavour, mostly sweet but a fair amount of fruit and wood notes. A great summer dram with a good amount of complexity for a young whisky. I liked this enough to buy a bottle straight after the tasting. From the website: “The first release in a new series 'Quiet Rebels' from Nc'Nean distillery, celebrating their small team of staff. This initial bottling is from founder Annabel, who built the distillery on her parent's farm on the west coast of Scotland and has picked some of her favourites from the distillery's early cask experiments. In particular this release uses some ex-Tokaji wine barrels, which give a slight sweetness and velvety texture to the spirit. The rest of the barrels were mainly ex-bourbon, which give coconut, toasted vanilla and tropical fruit notes. A release of 4504 bottles. Nc'nean's small batch Scotch whisky is made with organic Scottish barley using 100% renewable energy and is packaged in 100% recycled bottles”.