CL1 - Elements of Islay (Speciality Drinks Ltd)

This is like sitting on the grass next to a beach in the sun.  The taste is crisply smoky and salt-tinged, sweet and sappy.  With water, you taste juniper twigs thrown on a beach bonfire on which some sausages are already sizzling. 

On the palate, there's immediate sweetness and power, then the smoke comes through in a great wave of flavour.  Much more amenable with water that has a hint of real elegance.  This is a belter of a dram.

[These notes are reproduced from Wine & Spirit Magazine]

Nose: Coal tar soap mixed with hot bitumen.  Slowly becomes grass fires smelt from the seashore, so you get that saltiness in there too.

Palate:  Packs quite a punch with a lot of smoke at the front.  There is also a sweetness in here shrouded in the smoke.

Finish: Short and cleansing.

Comment: A great healing malt for those colder days.

[These notes are reproduced from Whisky Magazine]

Nose:  Highly phenolic.  Seaweed and driftwood mingling with hay and a briny/rockpool aroma.  There's some stewed pear.  Water brings huge smokiness, edible seaweed and hot sand.

Palate:  Sweet yet peppery.  Juniper wood, smoked sausage balanced by a distinct sweetness.

Finish:  Tingling and salty.

Comment:  Young, vibrant and brimful of personality.

[These notes are reproduced from Whisky Magazine]

Nose:  Boiled sweets and cut grass initially, then more savoury notes move in - Bisto, beef crisps.  Expected alcohol prickle fades away to chocolate and some bakery notes - dough, brown bread.  Some spices, then medicine cabinet aromas develop, before matches, buttered veg, toffee apple, tweed and honey. A complex nose that needs time to settle.  Water brings out toffee biscuit and barley sugar.

Palate:  Stewed fruit, burnt wood, red apple, smokey bacon, honey.  Plenty of balanced peat, with woodsmoke, coal and bonfire.  Peppery spice in the mid-palate, with some chilli and hot-buttered toast with honey.  Water lifts the coal, spices and apple flavours.

Finish:  Warming and long, with honey, pepper and coal surrounding a savoury cereal base, with occasional flashes of cooked apple.  A salty tinge right at the death.

Comment:  Another Element that likes a drop of water.  Intense, powerful, uncompromising and extremely complex.