The last in last week’s series of madeira cask whiskies was a Teeling. It wasn’t the best of the week but I liked it. And so, even though my first week of Irish whiskeys this summer didn’t go so well (three other Teelings: here, here and here), I’ll take a chance with another week. This time it’s all whiskeys and producers I knew nothing about till I purchased these miniatures from the Celtic Whiskey Shop in Dublin. First up, is something called Bill Phil from W.D. O’Connell. W.D. O’Connell are independent bottlers who release a wide range of sourced whiskeys under their own labels. Bill Phil—the name refers to someone in the owners’ family history—is a batched release of heavily peated, triple-distilled single malt whiskey. People who know more than me say the source is probably the Great Northern Distillery. Full bottles have the batch numbers printed on the labels. This miniature does not. The current batch is Batch 5. Seems likely, I guess, that this would be from that batch but it’s hard to say for sure. (Batch 4 was released in the US apparently.)  All the batches are matured in first-fill bourbon barrels. The peating level is all the way up to 55 ppm, by the way. Okay, let’s see what it’s like. Continue reading →