Caol Ila week began on Monday with a nice 7 yo bourbon barrel whisky bottled by Single Cask Nation. It continued on Tuesday with a very good 10 yo single refill sherry butt.  Here now to close out the week is the oldest of the trio: a 15 yo from Signatory that received a two year “finish” in a first-fill oloroso butt. Two years seems more like double maturation territory. It’s not clear, of course, if this was a product of re-racking multiple casks into the first-fill butt or if the cask/s re-racked were all sherry casks to begin with. It’s a brave new world of single cask whisky we live in—or to be exact, have lived in for some time. Alright, let’s get to it.

Caol Ila 15, 2007 (53.7%; Signatory; finished in first-fill oloroso butt 204; from a bottle split)

Nose: Raisiny sherry with not much sign of smoke or peat at first sniff. On the second sniff, there’s the smoke: dry woodsmoke with a lot of salt around the edges. Mild phenols emerge as it sits; the woodsmoke and the raisins merge and move in the direction of pipe tobacco. More of the pipe tobacco with water.

Palate: Quite a lot of salt here to start. The woodsmoke is here as well along with some spicy oak. A good drinking strength; slightly flabby texture. The sherry and the smoke and the oak come together as it sits but it doesn’t really amount to very much. With more time there’s some tar. A few drops of water and its gets quite bitter: a mix of oak extract and tar.

Finish: Long. The smoke dominates here and it’s not particularly phenolic here either. A little more phenolic with time and the tar lingers here as well once it shows up on the palate. Bitter here too with water.

Comments: The nose is nice but neat, it’s not very interesting on the palate—and with water it falls apart a bit there. It may be that the two years in first-fill oloroso rescued some over-oaked casks but not enough to turn the final product into anything special. And this too ends up being somewhat anonymous with nothing here that speaks directly of Caol Ila. Drinkable but disappointing.

Rating: 83 points.