ScotchingHard
Mortlach 1997 14 Year (Hart Brothers)
Single Malt — Speyside, Scotland
Reviewed
February 17, 2019 (edited February 18, 2019)
* Please note this review is for a different, unlisted bottle of Mortlach.
Bottle killed on 2/15/19.
Distillery: Mortlach
Bottler: Duncan Taylor
The Octave
16 years old
54.6% ABV (Cask Strength)
Distilled 1997
Bottled 2014
Cask No. 797668
Limited release of 88 bottles
Price: 210 USD
An Octave cask, as I understand it, is like those 2L mini oak barrels you can buy on Amazon for $49.95 to add some maturation to some shit whiskey you regret buying… but a little bigger. The essential idea, regardless of industry fluff on the boxes, is that the producers are itching for payday, so they took some whisky that wasn’t ready to be bottled, and forced some maturity and character into it by giving it some hard-time in a tiny, cramped cask.
Well, it worked. Hey, call it a shortcut, but I’m not going to deny a good tasting whisky. Duncan Taylor must’ve carved themselves out some fine tiny sherry oak staves, because this is a decadent, figgy, honeyed, buttery Mortlach. The waxy, fruity, meaty spirit character is still evident after the sherried arrival. The only complaints are a lack of integration, as this feels like two separate whiskies; and a lackluster finish. The sherry drops off quickly, and you are left with a little harshness that betrays the lack of maturity that the sherry finish was trying to cover up. Some water definitely improves things. I found aiming for around 48% ABV was the sweet spot, smoothing out the transitions and removing the harshness on the finish.
You probably won’t be able to find this particular cask. Most, if not all, of the 88 bottles probably ended up in the Hagerstown, MD area. There are multiple other casks of a 16 year old Duncan Taylor Octave Mortlach available in other areas listed on WhiskyBase. I probably won’t be getting another bottle, favoring to try other releases from The Octave series, or other independent bottlings from Mortlach. Real Scotch lovers know that Mortlach is a beast for independent bottlers, and it’s hard to go wrong with any cask strength release with a decent age statement.
Rating (price not a factor): 93 / 100
Purchase satisfaction (price factored): 4 / 5
210.0
USD
per
Bottle
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Octaves are legit, just seldom used for practical reasons. They cost as much to make as a 600 litre cask, take up way more than 1/10 the space, and need a lot of monitoring during the finishing process because of the intense wood interaction. @Soba45 There was also a 29 year old Caol Ila in this DT Octave range that was exceptional.
Good review. :-). Yeah I've had a few of these octave attempts and I think only the Adelphi Ardnamurchan was the only one to pull it off. Other than that from memory they have been disjointed as you say.
@Rick_M nonetheless, they made these little things as a loophole in the system. I don’t know why the SWA just doesn’t let them just drop a few inner staves in a proper barrel. That would feel more honest, and less desperate.
@ScotchingHard - an octave = 1/8 of a pipe cask = 50L approx.