Okay, let’s close out peated Islay week with one from Bruichladdich. This 16 yo Port Charlotte was bottled for the 2018 edition of Feis Ile, the Islay whisky festival. It is a vatting of the last five casks that were filled during the 2001, which was the first year that the peated Port Charlotte distillate was produced at Bruichladdich. It was given the name “The Heretic”, which I think refers to the fact Bruichladdich had not historically made peated whisky. The cask types that went into the vatting include ex-bourbon, ex-rum and ex-French wine. At only 1300 bottles, this was a true limited release. Let’s see what it was like.

Port Charlotte 16, 2001, The Heretic (55.9%; for Feis Ile 2018; from a bottle split)

Nose: The familiar Bruichladdich/Port Charlotte sour milk but it’s mixed here with sweet cereals and carbolic peat and lemon and the whole is rather nice. On the second sniff there’s some bacon fat in there too. On the third sniff the bacon fat turns to a freshly open can of smoked sardines. Some butterscotch in there as well. Water amplifies the butyric notes at first but it burns of leaving a mix of cereals and ash.

Palate: Comes in with sweet smoke and a lot of it; a lot of cracked pepper too. No butyric notes here, thankfully. Quite approachable at full strength; good texture. Sweeter with each sip, and it’s a sugarcane sweetness—that’s the rum cask’s influence. Alas, water brings out the butyric notes on the palate even as it brings out the lemon here as well.

Finish: Long. The smoke leads here, turning ashy as it goes. At the very end some water is added to the ash bucket. As on the palate with water.

Comments: I liked this very much to start, especially on the nose, but it didn’t quite sustain those highs or show interesting development. A very good whisky, nonetheless.

Rating: 87 points