Tasting Panel Notes

Cask No. 33.136

Halcyon tarfest

Islay

Celebrating 35 years since the Society's founding in Edinburgh

*Please limit one bottle per member*

The glass brimmed with mineralic bluster, tarry rope, kelp, simmering peat oils, cured meats and pine resin at first. Then burnt toast, a few tinned fruits and a thick sludge of natural tar liqueur. It harks back to a style this distillery hasn’t displayed since halcyon days in the 1970s. A slug of water reveals screeching tyres through a farmyard, green olives in brine, smoked German rauchbier, a dollop of dung, paraffin, BBQ sauce and pure, raw peats. On the palate a mini-tsunami of tar arrives, quickly followed by farmyard and coastal muscle. Earth, hessian, dunnage warehouse, soot, wax and honey all play a part. Reduction gives iodine, peat oils, crushed sea salt, wool, wet rocks, roasted parsnips, more tar, kelp and a final mineral flourish with a lingering herbal fade.

Cask: First-fill barrel 
Age: 10 years
Date distilled: April 2008
Alcohol: 57.1%
USA allocation: 66 bottles