Jan-Case
Kilchoman Am Bùrach (2020 Edition)
Single Malt — Islay, Scotland
Reviewed
September 12, 2020 (edited December 1, 2020)
Very welcoming Kilchoman peat on the nose which takes the traditional Islay peat spirit one step further. I must say - the ruby cask influence is nicely delivering some deep and fresh dark red fruit aromas. It is berries galore, pineapple with a fruity barbecue sauce, ginger, minerals.
On the palate very peat forward with burned matches and cold barbecue-smoked food. But also nicely sweet with cotton candy, caramelized almonds, fresh saw dust, a fresh sourness.
The finish is deliciously thick and chewy. The peat smoke is intense across all stages and also dominates the finish really nicely.
What a nice accident.
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@jonwilkinson7309 It's nothing that bad :)
@PBMichiganWolverine @cascode. I was going to watch that video as soon as I finished reading the comments here, but mice, peeing cats and optional QA has left me wondering if I'm better off not knowing!
@cascode You didn't mention the part where he strongly implies that they're aging 25 barrels of Kilchoman in ex-Plantation-Trinidad! Sounds like it isn't working too well yet, but I'm optimistic :)
What initially blew my mind about this was that 10,000 bottles were produced. I was imagining that roughly 17 port barrels were mistakenly tossed in with 17 Machir Bay ones (how would nobody catch that?!). I suspect now that it was more like one stray port got included, since at some point somebody is going to just be operating on muscle memory and make a mistake. Glad it worked out though :)
@cascode @Jan-Case my god, I wonder what other accidents happen...mice falling into the vats, cats peeing all over the barley chasing mice, etc....QA Seems optional
@PBMichiganWolverine There is a series of Youtube interviews that Kilchoman did for Feis Ile this year with different people at stages of the production. The one to watch is this one with Anthony Wills https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9JeJ9bZnCYw&t=413s you will believe that these things can happen after watching it :)
@PBMichiganWolverine I think these accidents happen more often then we think but most of the time no one mentions it and of course don’t release it. Kilchoman is young and new and different - they do :)
I always wonder if these accidents are truly accidents. You’d think there would be better controls in place.
@Jan-Case I have now. Good story, plus the benefit of adding to my Gaelic thesaurus. History repeats itself. A lot of the good things in life come about by accident
@CKarmios you can read about that in the whisky information here. Basically they accidentally mixed up cask that weren’t supposed to be used for this batch. But they liked the result so much that they still released it as a new whisky which translate means “the mess”.
What was the accident?