Kilchoman 9 year old 2008 100% Islay, cask 549 for K&L Wine Merchants

(Kilchoman cluster homepage)

On Monday, I reviewed a 50+ cask-sized batch of 9-ish year old 100% Islay Kilchoman single malt aged in former Buffalo Trace bourbon barrels.

Today, I'm reviewing a single cask of 9-ish year old 100% Islay Kilchoman single malt aged in a former Buffalo Trace bourbon barrel.

How about that for accidental coordination?

The two whiskies went head-to-head (so many hyphens today). Let's see who won...

Distillery: Kilchoman

Region: Islay

Age: 9 years (23 Oct 2008 - 27 June 2018)

Maturation: Buffalo Trace bourbon barrel
Barley: ~20ppm, sourced from Islay farms

Cask #: 549/2008

Outturn: 250 bottles (quite a productive barrel)

Exclusive to: K&L Wine Merchants

Alcohol by Volume: 54.8%

Chillfilltered? No
Colorant added? No

(from a bottle split)

The nose holds the great coastal beach (sand/ocean/seaweed) note while staying a good distance from the new make. Orange blossoms, lemon zest, apple skins and honeydew take turns in the foreground, while the mellow smoke remains in the background. When diluted to 50%abv, that coastal note shifts to dashi. The fruits recede while cinnamon ice cream and vanilla bean power roll forward.

The palate begins lean and savory, with hints of seaweed, peppercorns, bell peppers and bitter herbs. Minty sweetness and tart fruit arise after 20 minutes. Cinnamon and cracked pepper take over at the 30 minute mark. Dropping it to 50%abv gives it a boost, trimming down that raw edge, revealing a fragrant mix of cloves and mossy peat. Hints of salt and sugar linger below.

It finishes with a mix of bitterer, heavy smoke and rye white dog, gradually sweetening with time. Reduced to 50%abv, it has a cleaner bitterness, less smoke, less sugar, more sea salt.

Another 100% Islay that takes water well. If you're keeping score, that's 2-for-2 with the local malt, 0-for-11 with the PE malt. Though I prefer the fruity nose neat, the palate fills out (again seeming like it adds a couple years to itself) with that little bit of water. This (1 cask) topped the 9th Edition (50+ casks), reading better composed and balanced. Here the whisky feels like it's almost there. I'm not going to say, "I can't wait until this stuff is 12 years old," but I think I kinda just said it.

Availability - Sold out
Pricing - $150
Rating - 84

Kilchoman 100% Islay, 9th Edition

(Kilchoman cluster homepage)

Kilchoman doesn't source all its malt from Diageo's Port Ellen Maltings. An increasing portion of its barley comes from small Islay farms, including their own. The distillery's new malting floor and kiln provides the capacity to do 30% of their own malting going forward, using these local sources. While the Port Ellen malt has a phenolic content of 50ppm, the 100% Islay malt measures ~20ppm, resulting in a different spirit and whisky.

Since my palate usually enjoys whiskies in the 10-20ppm range, I keep hoping I'd prefer the 100% Islay products over Kilchoman's regular single malts. But it hasn't come to pass. The 3rd, 4th and 5th editions of the 100% are the most under-baked Kilchomans I've tried. Does the PE malt's 50ppm hide a spirit's immature side? Or does Diageo bewitch that stuff?

I'm rolling out three 100% Islay barley Kilchomans this week. They're all older than the aforementioned three editions (and the one single cask I kinda liked eight years ago), so I will attempt to approach them with no expectations.

Distillery: Kilchoman

Region: Islay

Age: somewhere around nine years?

Maturation: first fill and refill bourbon casks
Barley: ~20ppm, sourced from Islay farms

Outturn: 12,000 bottles

Release year: 2019

Alcohol by Volume: 50%

Chillfilltered? No
Colorant added? No

(from a bottle split)

Apricots, cinnamon, brine and rye white dog fill the nose, in fact this is very close to new make. There are some new tires, new sneakers and toasty peat in the midground. Oats in the background. It improves once diluted to 40%abv, turning into liquid churros (cinnamon, brown sugar and dough), with hints of jasmine and vanilla beans in the background. Notes of bonito flakes and piney peat develop with time.

The palate isn't particularly hot but there is an unmistakable ethyl flavor in the background. A mix of salt, smoke and sweetness sits on top of that, with hints of mint and grass in the corners. As with the nose, diluting the whisky to 40%abv makes it more dessert-like while also adding complexity. It's sweet, but within reason, with notes of brown sugar and Boston cream. Waves of pepper and seaweed provide heft.

At first the finish matches the palate. Then it gets mintier and sweeter, until the salt takes over. Reduced to 40%abv, the whisky finishes with fruity cinnamon, cayenne pepper and Boston cream.

Well I'll be. A Kilchoman that swims! Trying it neatly, all I could think was "Oh crap, not again. How many more editions will it take?" But once I diluted it, the whisky seemed to take on a few more years. I probably woke the oak, but it was needed. It's still the least-formed of the distillery's standard or annual releases, which is curious as these batches include 50-60 barrels. Looking around the Intertubes, I see my opinion does not match that of the majority. That's cool, the majority can keep enjoying this whisky.

Availability - Various 100% Islay editions can be found on both sides of the Atlantic, even in Ohio!
Pricing - $90-$110
Rating - 81 (diluted only)

Kilchoman 2010 Vintage

(Kilchoman cluster homepage)

Though some of the Machir Bays soared, I'm feeling more optimistic about these Vintage releases overall. The 2007 was good, though not as grand as I'd hoped. The 2008 was probably about as great as a 46%abv 7 year old whisky can be. Now I'm leaping up to the most recent Vintage (though a 2011 may be coming out this year), the 9 year old 2010. As of the moment these words are typed, this is the oldest Kilchoman I've ever tried. Of course that record will be topped soon......oops, I probably should've thrown a spoiler alert in there.

Distillery: Kilchoman

Region: Islay

Age: Nine years (2010 - 2019)

Maturation: 30 bourbon barrels and 3 Oloroso Sherry butts
Barley: 50ppm, sourced from Port Ellen maltings

Outturn: 15,000 bottles

Alcohol by Volume: 48%

Chillfilltered? No
Colorant added? No

(from a purchased sample)

The nose begins with a lovely note of a recently snuffed candle, with clove and brown sugar in the background. Pine and charred veg appears next, followed by pineapple and fruity cinnamon. A hint of manure in the background. It's mostly peated pineapple juice once the whisky is reduced to 40%abv, with hints of cinnamon and grass in the back.

The palate's salt is nearly excessive until it mixes with a vegetal note creating something like a veggie broth. Serrano pepper above, cardamom and flower blossoms underneath. The smoke gets sharper, bitterer and more metallic with time. That bitter, metallic smoke makes up most of the diluted 40%abv palate. It gets grassier and more floral, while losing the salt.

Smoky residue and cassia lead the finish, followed by black pepper and ocean water. Once it gets diluted to 40%abv, the finish gets very ashy, bitter and grassy.

Like all of this cluster's Machir Bays, this whisky's palate does not take water well. Thus it's not just a 5yo whisky issue. Though it's preferable at the 48%abv bottling strength (two points higher than its predecessors), this whisky struggled next to the 7yo 2008. It has a cracking start with an engaging nose, but the palate feels stunted and doesn't air out well. Its lack of oak is novel in today's Islay market, but the mouth and finish needed something more, a couple bolder casks or maybe more time. Perhaps that was the role of the three sherry butts, but they've disappeared within.

Next week: Kilchomans that are 100% not from Port Ellen barley. But for now...

Availability - Available on both sides of the Atlantic and Pacific, though mostly in Europe
Pricing - $90-$110
Rating - 84 (with the nose keeping it aloft)

Kilchoman 2008 Vintage

(Kilchoman cluster homepage)

Following the 5 year old 2006 Vintage and the 6 year old 2007 Vintage, Kilchoman released the 7 year old 2008 vintage in 2015. Unlike my experience with the 2007, I come to this review without expectations as I've never tried it before. Though often tempted to buy a whole bottle of it, I settled on purchasing a 60mL sample instead. Let's see how it fares against its previous, though younger, sibling.

Distillery: Kilchoman

Region: Islay

Age: Seven years (2008 - 2015)

Maturation: "bourbon barrels"

Barley: 50ppm, sourced from Port Ellen maltings

Outturn: ???

Alcohol by Volume: 46%

Chillfilltered? No
Colorant added? No

(from a purchased sample)

The nose is very beachy, lots of seaweed and salty air. A little bit of soot in the background. Bits of black licorice and fruity yeast here and there. With time, it develops a rich apple pie note. Diluted to 40%abv, it gets farmier and yeastier, while also picking up notes of apples and pineapples, pine needles and vanilla extract. And most importantly, black walnuts.

The palate's smoke is by turns savory, peppery and sooty. It has a nice combo of baking spices, brown sugar and almond extract, though it never gets too sweet. A slight metallic note in the background grows a bit once the whisky is reduced to 40%abv. Roses and tart apples in the background, earth and peppercorns in the foreground.

Lemons, baking spices and chiles lead the finish with gentle smoke and sweetness lingering behind. It gets bitterer and smokier when reduced to 40%abv, with a little bit of tartness around the sides.

This is the vintage I should have purchased. Unlike the 2007, the palate does not cower beneath the nose's excellence, and the finish is quite nice. The peat reads loudest in the nose as well, mellowing out in the palate. I prefer it neat, but the nose takes water very well. There's a quality here I had really hoped I would find during this cluster, the sort of merit that makes me think, "THIS is what I was looking forward to."

Availability - May still be found at some European retailers
Pricing - $85-$100 (w/VAT)
Rating - 88

Kilchoman 2007 Vintage (my bottle)

(Kilchoman cluster homepage)

Kilchoman began their "Vintage" series in 2011 with the 2006 Vintage (all of five years old), and have been releasing the next vintage every other year, each one also a little older than the next. For instance, the 2007 Vintage appeared in 2013 and had a 6 year age statement, and 2019 saw the 9 year old 2010 Vintage. These tend to be bourbon cask-only batches — though the 2010 had <10% sherry casks — so it's a nice way to experience the progression of the distillery's single malt, something akin to Kilkerran's Work In Progress series.

I first tried the 2007 Vintage at an official Kilchoman event seven looooooooong years ago. It was matched up with five other Kilchomans, three of which were pricier single casks. According to my handwritten notes, it won the night by some distance. I even wondered if it was the best Kilchoman I'd had yet.

Irrational exuberance followed, as it does.

Not only did I buy a bottle, but I started obsessing over every subsequent vintage release. Should I buy it, should I not buy it? This actually continued right up through 2019. But I didn't buy any other vintage. Nor did I even bother to open my bottle.

Now I have. And now I will review the 2007 Vintage.

Distillery: Kilchoman
Region: Islay

Age: Six years (2007- 2013)

Maturation: "fresh and refill bourbon barrels"

Barley: 50ppm, sourced from Port Ellen maltings

Outturn: 10,000 bottles

Alcohol by Volume: 46%

Chillfilltered? No
Colorant added? No
(from the top third of my bottle)

A swirl of cigarette and Black & Mild cigarillo smokes fill the nose's foreground. Anise, halvah and soil linger in the background. It gradually develops a gummy worm sugariness and a hint of copper. It gets a little darker when reduced to 40%abv, with more industrial metallic smoke, dirty hay, old Parmesan rind. More on gumdrops than gummy worms in the background.

The palate begins with a mix of sea salt, tart limes, gentle earthy bitterness and a sort of coastal smoke. Not much sweetness. Though the bitterness grows, it never overwhelms. The smoke gradually gets ashier. The palate's texture is curiously thin, as if the whisky was chillfiltered. Simple sweet smoke and brine take over once the whisky is diluted to 40%abv, with some hints of almond and cashew butter in the background. Again the smoke gets ashier with time.

The long but simple finish holds bitter smoke and charred burgers. A little bit of tart citrus offers some brightness. At 40%abv, the finish is lightly sweet, ashy and briny.

Seven years later, I have a soberer (though not for lack of trying!) take on the 2007 Vintage. This is a good whisky. Period. It's not the best Kilchoman I've ever tried, nor will it land in the top five of this very cluster. It's softer and rounder than any of last week's Machir Bays. It also stands up to dilution better than any of this cluster's previous seven Kilchomans.

As I've found with most young whiskies, this one's excitement descends with each aspect. The nose establishes a sturdy style different than most other Islay single malts, while also being a bit dirtier than the Machir Bays. The palate begins well, though I wish its eventual ashiness was quieter. It finishes in a satisfactory fashion, no more, no less.

Mark it. This is the ninth Kilchoman, but the first to make me contemplate, "How great would this be in __ more years?" And now there's two-thirds of a bottle left for me to ponder over.

Availability - Probably sold out
Pricing - $70-$80 back in the day
Rating - 85

Assessing the Kilchoman cluster at the halfway point

(Kilchoman cluster homepage)

Having just completed seven consecutive Machir Bay (MB) reviews in a row, I'm pausing before launching into the Not-Machir Bay portion of the Kilchoman cluster in order to summarize the experience. Setting aside the new make review preceding the MBs, I wanted to expand upon something I said during Friday's review: "[T]his series has begun to reveal the limits of ~5 year old peated whisky."

While none of those seven whiskies was a stinker — all ranged between 81-89 scores — all of them fractured to the point of near unpleasantness once diluted. The two standard MBs were bottled at 46%abv, and they were reduced to 40%abv, while the cask strength MBs were diluted to 46%abv to see how they would perform at the standard strength. I'm not too shocked to see a single malt read more complex and balanced at 46%abv than 40%. But I found it revealing that not one of the cask strength bottlings performed well at the standard's strength. Each of them was supposedly in the queue for a Machir Bay batch, but each of them would have been a hindrance, or something requiring blending out, had it been used.

All but one of the Cask Strength releases was from a very small batch, with two of them coming from its own single cask. Could they have been selected out by the blenders because of the style/dilution issue? If so, how does that explain the much larger 2020 release, which was the clunkiest of the cluster thus far? Is "Machir Bay" just a brand name, something they stick at the beginning of a whisky for familiarity purposes? Even the standard releases no longer have any specific official age or maturation data, so their recipes could have already changed a few times in less than a decade. Or has Kilchoman found the frontier's end for 5 year old whisky?

Of the seven MBs I would buy only one of them at 46%abv, and that is the 2013 bottling of the standard release, the earliest and youngest of the bunch. Of the five cask strength releases, the only one I'd buy is the 2014 version, also the earliest and (possibly) youngest of the group. I'll also note that those are the only two expressions for which I had both official age and maturation information.

All of this ignores the high quality of these very young whiskies. All seven of these Kilchomans are six years or younger, yet all fall within my definition of B-grade whisky. I'm a tough crowd for whiskies of this age, having strongly disliked both the vast majority of single-digit-aged indie casks I've tried and the official NAS releases from other distilleries. Perhaps my Kilchoman reviews aren't as ebullient as they were eight years ago, and perhaps the earlier releases have the nod over the newer ones, but I continue to be impressed by many of the "Machir Bay" branded whiskies. It's not much of a stretch for one to think the 50ppm new make fuels the quality.

Now it's time to push beyond that 5 year wall to see what happens to Kilchoman single malt with more maturation time.

Kilchoman Machir Bay Cask Strength, 2020 edition

(Kilchoman cluster homepage)  

If you're getting tired of this series-within-a-series, I can sympathize. While I'm glad it's reaching its conclusion, this series has begun to reveal the limits of ~5 year old peated whisky.

Kilchoman gave up in 2020, though not like the rest of us. They decided to release the Machir Bay Cask Strength (MBCS) worldwide. (Though not as part of the regular rotation.) The data out there are limited, but I'm guessing the outturn is larger than the previous one-offs. The last "Original Cask Strength" release utilized quarter casks, while this Machir Bay Cask Strength has regular(?) bourbon and sherry casks. There's some Xmas stuff on front label, and these words on the back label:

Before reducing a batch of our Machir Bay to its regular bottling strength of 46%abv, this release was bottled at cask strength...

If you've read any of this week's reviews then you'd know my skepticism about the first part of the above statement. But I (seriously!) would just like some good whisky, so here it goes. Again. For the last time.

At cask strength, 58.6%abv	Diluted to 46%abv
There's just a wall of butter and caramel blocking everything else in the nose for the first few minutes. Peat and anise break through first, then popcorn (with butter and caramel, natch). And brown sugar. Salty ocean air, yeast and apricots show up after 30 minutes.	The nose starts with caramel corn, simple syrup, ash and something metallic. It needs some time, then the coastal note drifts up from the background, followed by moss, cinnamon and roses.
Peated Robotussin (I'd drink it) in the palate. Charred beef and ash. Hints of roses, mint and caramel in the background. Starting at the 20 minute mark the whisky takes a turn towards tequila (joven, maybe?), with a little bit of lemon and brown sugar.	Ooookay, this palate is big on vegetal, smoky silver mezcal (yes I know tequila and mezcal's relationship, thank you). It gets sweeter with time, until the simple peat smoke takes a backseat to a lump of cinnamon and golden raisins.
It finishes sweet and ashy. Pears and tequila. A squeeze of lemon.	This finish reads hotter, somehow, with a mix of bitter ash, golden raisins and lemon juice.

WORDS WORDS WORDS

One of the reasons I was drawn to Kilchoman's single malt was because it was not reminiscent of mezcal. I like mezcal, but all those baby Taliskers on the market burned me out on mezcal-esque scotch, so that's a problem here. BUT, thanks to too many bad decisions in college, super young tequila makes me queasy, so I actually prefer the diluted version of this MBCS this time. The nose was the best part of each version of the malt, so good that it keeps the whisky from dipping into the C-grade range.

None of this is a ringing endorsement of course, so the Machir Bay run ends on a wobbly note. Because these whiskies were more educational than I'd expected, and we're near the cluster's halfway point, I'll try to post a recap/assessment of the eight whiskies before continuing on. Happy Friday!

Availability - a few dozen USA and Europe retailers
Pricing - $70 - $85
Rating - 81