This week of reviews of wine-bothered peated whiskies got off to a rather rocky start on Monday with a 10 yo Ballechin from a marsala cask. Things looked up significantly with Wednesday’s Kilchoman for Spec’s which had received a madeira cask finish. That one was three years younger but balanced the peat and the sweeter wine notes well. Here to close out the week is a Caol Ila that is almost as old as the other two put together. This is also a finish, this time in moscatel casks. If I recall correctly, the Caol Ila Distillers Edition—is that still a regular thing?—is also a moscatel finish; but I’m not sure what connection that might have to a 16 yo moscatel finished whisky released by an indie bottler: perhaps something left over from a Feis Ile or Distillery Exclusive experiment? If you have any ideas, please write in below. The bottler in question is the Alistair Walker Whisky Company, who put out all their releases under the Infrequent Flyers label. While the company is relatively new, Alistair Walker has been around in the whisky world for a while. He’s the son of Billy Walker, ex of Benriach/Glendronach, now at Glenallachie. Indeed, he was the source of the information on Glendronach’s “single cask” practices that led to this post, early in the blog’s career. Of course, none of that has anything to do with this whisky but I got a bit of a kick out of it when I found out.

Caol Ila 16, 2006 (56.6%; Infrequent Flyers; moscatel finish)

Nose: Sweet peat with charred pork, dried orange peel, a bit of plum sauce; some pencil lead. The orange peel and pencil lead pick up as it sits and there’s a bit of cream in there too softening the whole. The gunpowder from the palate shows up here too with more time. A few drops of water and the rock salt pops out bigly here as well; the orange peel moves in the direction of dried apricot.

Palate: Comes in with pepper over the sweet peat and then salt and a touch of tar as I swallow. Hot but approachable at full strength; syrupy texture. Sharper on the next few sips with rock salt and gunpowder. Continues in this general vein. Okay, let’s see what water does for it. It pushes the gunpowder and salt back and brings out more of the dried orange peel; the plum sauce from the nose edges towards hoisin now.

Finish: Long. The smoke gets drier and there’s more salt. Some oak pops out with time. As on the palate with water but the salt comes back strong at the end.

Comments: I had very high hopes for this after the first couple of sniffs but, neat, it felt quite unbalanced on the palate. I’m far from a sulphur-phobe and this is not heavily sulphured but there wasn’t enough to round out the sharper notes. Water rescued it on the palate and made the finish more interesting as well. Really wonder what kind of cask(s) the spirit that went into the moscatel hogshead was first matured in.

Rating: 85 points. (Pulled up by water.)