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Ailsa Bay Sweet Smoke Release 1.2
Single Malt — Lowlands, Scotland
Reviewed
December 19, 2019 (edited November 11, 2022)
Nose: A pleasantly soft bonfire-style peat-smoke with some sweet citrus and stone fruit notes hiding in the background. Not a lot more but what is there is well done.
Palate: A mild peaty and sweet citrus arrival, very much following on from the nose. A little sweet hay, vanilla and light cereal tones appear as it develops. Some green apple flavour peeks through towards the finish and adding water considerably develops the sweet malty and fruit notes. The texture is agreeable.
Finish: Medium, but very abrupt. The sweet citrus and orchard fruit notes fade first and the smoke lasts a little longer - then stops dead in its tracks as though a light switch was flipped off.
This is a brief note as I tried this at a local liquor store today and didn't have a lot of time to dwell on the tasting (but at least they served it in a glencairn).
Very young and simple in profile, but pleasant nonetheless. It has precision and is clean but lacks complexity. It has less character than some of the equivalently priced peaty blended malts from independent bottlers (like Six Isles or Big Peat) and it is also bested by almost all other peated single malts in this price range.
However it's well made for sure and the only real fault I found was in the finish which was perplexingly curtailed. One moment it's there, then suddenly it's gone. One notably good thing is that there is no intrusive ethanol presence - I would have sworn that this was 40%.
I'm glad to have tasted it but even on special ($85 down from $99) I wouldn't buy it - maybe if it was half price ...
"Average" : 78/100 (2.75 stars)
99.0
AUD
per
Bottle
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@Rick_M I guess - if it was measured the way everyone else does it would be more like 40 ppm. However like most aspects of this whisky the approach to measurement, and measuring the "sweet parts per million" as well (WTF?) seems to me little more than a marketing gimmick. They extol the virtues of precision and a "scientific" approach to whisky making, but is that really just spin on having a totally automated plant where raw ingredients go in one end and computer-created whisky comes out the other?
Yeah I tried the first one and was not a fan. I ordered a sample of this by mistake!
Interesting they measure phenols just prior to bottling. I wish all distilleries did this.