Ledaig 2005 4 Year Old (bot 2010) BBR #900008

sample from a friend

This may be my first Ledaig, and I am going into this one with very little backstory for the bottle. No expectations, no ideas. What fun!

Nose: That's a powerful nose and it needs a few minutes to blow off and calm down. Now a peaty side emerges with seaweed, lapsang souchong, salty roasted meat. Vinuous sherry with some notes of caramel, oxidized nuts, chocolate malt, some citric fruit, strawberries and rhubarb, and more red fruit with time. (with water) Oh, more marmalade, chocolate, and generally more refined. Salted watermelon rind. Just a bit flatter peat and seaweed.

Palate: Big and brash. Also a little disjointed at first. The peat is rather ashier, and a chunk of soot. Lots of malted chocolate, some weak coffee (from the oak). Stale ginger. More bbq notes in the depth. Not as much fruit here as I found on the nose. (with water) More drying, and a few more grapes and dark berries in the back.

Finish: The chocolate malt really sticks in the corners of the mouth, and the peat lingers for a while on something like metholated seaweed. The smoke from a slow roast. This was good, though rather disjointed on palate entry. If the alcohol integrated a bit and the sherry married up a little more, this could turn into something really great. As it was, it was a lot of nice parts, with a few faults, but not always working together. B-/B

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