Caol ila 8 Year Old Unpeated bottled 2008

Nose: A succulent toffee-mint to accompany lemons and cherries burning on hot coals. Crushed peanuts are sprinkled over melting perfumed wax, before a confectionary fire-blanket of apple-pie, chocolate hob-nobs and fig rolls envelopes the heat and puts out the smoke.

Taste: A smooth and luxurious oil massages the palate, with a velvet-like nectar of pear and ginger, infused with chocolate oranges and jalapeno candy floss. A truly soft and sensual experience.

Finish: Tender vanilla and luscious honeycomb continue the caress, before a long and enveloping meringue duvet wraps itself around you, and lays you down on a mattress of feather-like gooseberry and rhubarb-flavoured incense smoke.

Balance: A stunning advert for what such a young whisky can do. It also forces the question as to whether this may actually be better than the standard peated Caol Ila. Perhaps this is the unique personality that we never knew that Caol Ila posessed underneath its traditional peated schooling. Or perhaps even more intriguingly, were all Islay distilleries to experiment this way, we may in fact find that they need not always rely on peat so heavily to define the character of their malts. Who knows, and we may well learn the answer to that in time should these Caol Ila releases prove to be a hit, however this stands alone as a dangerously seductive dram, and is a true femme fatale with its intoxicating 64.2% ABV.

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