Bruichladdich Distillery has unveiled the 13th annual series of Octomore, its super-heavily peated single malt.
Whether you love your Speysides or your Highlands, you have to give it to the distilleries that don’t shy away from peat. The smoke, the texture, and the complexity that comes with a peat-forward Scotch is like nothing else and now, Bruichladdich Distillery continues its love affair with peat with the latest single malt Octomore single malts.
Matured for five years, always super-heavily peated and bottled close to cask strength, Octomore’s surprising elegance has led the distillery to define it as “The Impossible Equation”, with each new Octomore series exploring the very limits of single malt whisky. Distilled with quality not quantity in mind, the experimental trio of limited bottlings continue to push the boundaries of whisky making, exploring barley provenance, terroir, varying peat levels and cask management in the pursuit of flavour.
Octomore 13.1 is the backbone of the series and offers a necessary comparison from which the other expressions alternate. Malted to a stratospheric 137.3 PPM, the spirit has been refilled into fresh ex-American oak casks after its five-year maturation, resulting in notes of rich toffee, coconut and vanilla.
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Like 13.1, Octomore 13.2 is distilled from 100% Scottish Mainland barley. It is also malted to the same 137.3 PPM, but is instead matured in first-fill Oloroso butts from Jerez, Spain – giving a unique opportunity to compare the two spirits. The sherry influence beautifully complements the smoke and vibrancy of the single malt, with its slow maturation on Islay accentuating the salty tang of the spirit.
Octomore 13.3 demonstrates the phenomenal force of flavour when combining super-heavy peat with the variable harvests gathered from Islay, on one singular farm. Matured in a foundational parcel of first-fill ex-American whiskey barrels and a supplementary selection of second-fill European oak casks, it is malted to 129.3 PPM and has notes of vanilla and brown sugar, counterbalanced with fresh fruit.
Just the ticket for the chilly evenings ahead.
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