Port Charlotte PC8 Ar Duthchas

First vapor: Dates, ripe orange and peat like sneakers (or blown-out birthday candles).

Nose: The principal aroma is baklava (walnut variety, with dark honey) with salty orange/lime and sweet gingery gunpowder. Maybe lightly floral: Deeper inhaling can bring amaretto, light lilac and pale chalk.

Palate: Entrance is on fire, burning lighter fluid. (If you can even notice it, the flames are over floral cherry). Keeping it in the mouth creates a thick and syrupy maple, mixed warm butter and a heaping of hot ginger. After swallowing, that ginger gets really hot on the tongue-- hot as bacon fat-- while a touch of minty coolness relief develops inside your cheeks.

Finish: Peppery ginger over lingering orange-honey sweetness (much lighter now)...; and decaying into ash.

Nose-with-water: Water makes this marzipan, in a salty pastry, and with some rubber (or those sneakers again). If forced to pick out a fruit base, it is green apple; but it is not especially fruity. Palate-with-water: Water makes this tar on the entrance; then into honey & vanilla & smoky macadamia nuts; and then, as before, tingling with ginger on the tongue. Same finish.

The closest association for me is the Uigeadail, since both are strong peaty malts with a thrilling touch of sweetness and bottled at high strength. In comparison, the PC8 is less fruity and more flames; the finish is also less raisin and clove, more honey and ginger. Both are intense, complex, and balanced. However, whereas I drink the Uigeadail neat, the PC8 is too 'enflamed' at each stage to really appreciate. (In fact, my rating for undiluted PC8 would sink to 84 or so.)

So I feel much better adding drops of water to this one, since it smothers that overbearing entrance to pleasant smoke, while also bringing out some vanilla; and the hot ginger is tamed to a nutty tone.

The overall impression is then a rich combination of tar, salty nuts, & honey.

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