Number 3 in the countdown to 300, and the obvious next step from Octomore 14.1. Straight into the glass, and something is clearly drastically different from what came before; what is in store for me here… N: Wow, that hits different. This is overwhelmingly winey. After almost ten minutes in the glass there is still a wall of red wine. Sherry, dried fruit and maybe some marzipan or turkish delight that I can’t single out. A hint of black pepper. With enough effort I think I find some raw very mulchy peat and ashy-sulphur. (The nose here is uncomfortably close to a Berry Bros and Rudd Sherry Cask I very much disliked). The malt brilliance of Bruichladdich is lost to me and I am wounded. P: Yikes. What is this?! Sweet and tannic in complete disharmony. Bitter burnt coffee, seaweed and heavy stony minerality. Menthol and aniseed. The somewhat briny, mineralic ashy smoke is buried under a wall of sweet wine. F: Medium. Sherry, waxy-oak. Beach pebble and ash. A fairly liberal watering (four drops into half a dram) draws more sulphur out of the nose but with it a hint of dry barely and tannic spice. The palate kind of doubles over in pain, the smoke billows forth and its cool and maritime, but then a strange rose, wet cardboard and prickliness develops against wine and sherry that just wont settle down. Ooph. Bruichladdich, seriously?! What have you done here? I don’t get it. I realise that Octomore is experimental, pushes the envelope yada yada. But really? Sweet and smoke can work, yes. But it is also really easy to balls up. Not everything has to leave the editing room floor. Some things should be chalked up to experience and allowed to fade away. I realise I have little right as a rank amateur to call out one of the finest distilleries anywhere in the world, but come on guys this is not anywhere close to the excellence I, and I am sure others, would expect from you. It’s weird, jarring, and doesn’t work. Be better than this. Distiller whisky taste #298 [Pictured here with sparkly chunk of ruby fuchsite schist from the westernmost part of the Archaean Dharwar Craton in Karnataka, India. This delicious rock is predominantly fine grained green fuchiste (a chromium mica) with poprhyroblasts of reddish corrundum (rubies). Rims of kyanite altered to fine white quartz and muscovite rim the rubies as coronas. This rock was formed from potassic-siliceous fluids infiltrating high pressure-temperature zones of metamorphism that were busy transforming thick piles of marine muds and silts during the early Proterozoic]. Bruichladdich running scores Classic Laddie: 4/5 Bruichladdich 18 re/define: 4.75/5 Black Art 10.1 29 y/o: 5/5 Port Charlotte 10: 4.5/5 Port Charlotte CC:01: 5/5 Octomore 14.1: 4/5 Octomore 14.2: 2.75/5