Bruichladdich Octomore 12.1 Super-heavily Peated 59.9%

NZD$350.00

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Nowhere is the duality of our Octomore super heavily peated series more pertinent than in our 12.1 edition. Unexpected, delicate but powerful, this is unadulterated heavy smoke balanced with our vivacious fruity and floral distillate.

While Octomore in itself does not conform to tradition, our Head Distiller Adam Hannett is inclined to mature Octomore .1 editions solely in ex-American whiskey casks for five vibrant years.

Octomore 12.1 is the necessary control for the rest of the series, as experiments within an experiment, but our baseline should not be underestimated.

Mainland grown Scottish barley is distilled in a patient and considered trickle.

The stripped back maturation profile allows a sensory conversation that highlights the cereal-rich, malty notes of this barley-forward single malt. Vanilla, citrus and fudge culminate in an enigmatic challenge to received whisky wisdom.

--------THE PRODUCER--------

Bruichladdich

Bruichladdich (pronounced Brook-laddie), meaning 'bank on the shore', was built in 1881 on the edge of Loch Indaal on the most westerly point of Islay.The story of Octomore is that when the newly-resurrected Bruichladdich was elbowed out of their malt supply at Diageo’s Port Ellen maltings (which didn’t want to handle their low-volume orders), whisky industry legend Jim McEwan sourced peated malt from Bairds Maltings in Inverness. While visiting, he discovered that Bairds was doing their malting the old-fashioned way: using a giant open-air outdoor peat fire. Modern maltings don’t do this, because it’s extremely variable. One windy day during the drying process will cause the peat levels to plummet, and no matter what the weather the final product is often way over the requested ppm (parts per million) peat levels requested by the distilleries who, as we all know, love their consistency. To combat this variability Bairds blends the heavily-peated barley with unpeated malt to hit the numbers specified by his customers. Jim asked whether anyone was distilling the uncut stuff, and was told that nobody would want to do that because it would be undrinkable. Anyone who has ever met Jim knows that could only be taken as a challenge. Instead of the 40 ppm malt he went there to buy (for the Port Charlotte brand, Bruichladdich’s peated line) he came home with 131 ppm. Luckily, Bruichladdich’s stills are unusually tall and narrow and this causes the resulting spirit to be very light — all of the heavier phenols that we associate with “heavily peated” whisky fail to climb that high and never make it into the heart cut. So while it’s true that 80 – 300 ppm malt would be undrinkable from anyone else’s stills, from the stills at Bruichladdich it comes out downright elegant and fruity. All Jim had to do was mature it just long enough in oak to mellow the alcohols and then bottle it at cask strength (later, he started mixing in just a little of Octomore Farm’s crystal clear spring water) and Octomore was born.