Revisiting Bruichladdich’s Port Charlotte 2007 CC:01 57.8%

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Over a year ago, we had two different evenings exploring whiskies from Bruichladdich… doing a peat progression from no peat to peat to super turbo charged peat. At the time, I specifically remembered how the Cognac Cask surprised, given it was a different cask that the usual ex-bourbon, with an interesting inter-play with the peaty Port Charlotte style.

So when planning my special evening with the Port Charlotte Micro-Provenance 5 trio, I thought of having a ‘starter’ to push our palates into the smoky mode. My logic was this would better enable us to discern nuances in the trio, past the peat. Picking up another duty free bottle of the Cognac Cask seemed a perfect fit, in keeping with the cask theme.

I began our session warning my fellow tasters that this was the ‘appetizer’ before the main course. And while we sampled blind, I shared all four were from the same distillery and started at the same ppm – 40 in case you were wondering – but from there diverged.

Only after we sampled all four whiskies blind did they get revealed – one by one – after a round of trying to “guess” what cask magic produced that particular single malt.

Here is what we thought of the Cognac Cask…

Port Charlotte 8 year 2007 CC:01 57.8%

  • Colour – Coppery gold
  • Nose – Sour lemon, apricot, dark chocolate, cinnamon, a sharp “snuff” like quality, pungent like wasabi peas… as it settled down, the bite of tobacco sweetened, with more of the fruit coming to the fore, eventually taking on a chocolate creme
  • Palate – Strong cognac, bitter, dusty, rock salt, despite the almost brash aromas, the flavours were much less phenolic
  • Finish – Chilli, lightly bitter
  • Water – Makes it sweet, beginning with an explosion of pepper of all types – from black pepper to cayenne – settling into a cinnamon sweetness

This one needs time… when we returned to it, we discovered creme brule, a delicious custard, vanilla baked goods quality. Delicious!

The speculation began…

  • Thoughts of alcohol strength hovered around 48%… a far cry from the actual 57.8%
  • As for cask type? It was split between ex bourbon, virgin American oak to one lone voice wondering if it may have a French wine twist… none guessed it could be a Cognac cask

It turned out to be the perfect “kick start”. The bolder peat in this Port Charlotte cleared the path to focus on the more subtle peat of the MP5 trio.

Port Charlotte MP5 Single Casks:

And what did we try last year? Our Bruichladdich peat progression evenings featured:

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Bruichladdich Port Charlotte MP5

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The whole idea behind Bruichladdich’s Micro-Provenance (or MP) series is to demonstrate the difference to be found between casks when starting at approximately the same place. Through this journey, one can explore the evolution of a single malt, comparing and contrasting…

For #LaddieMP5, head distiller Adam Hannett selected three single casks of Port Charlotte whisky:

  • All starting at the same peat level – 40 ppm
  • Using the same barley type – Optic
  • Distilled within 2 weeks of each other in November 2005
  • Then matured for 10 years…. just in different casks…

The result was a fascinating experiment and experience enjoyed by our original Mumbai whisky tasting group late August 2018.

Port Charlotte MP5 Single Casks Trio: 

I asked the Comms team for more info and they said the best thing to do is to watch the MP5 broadcast where Adam and Allan talked through the whiskies – well worth watching!

To get us in the mood for peaty full cask strength drams, I also opened up another bottle of Port Charlotte to help calibrate our palates. The whisky I selected for this purpose was:

Tasting notes will be available over the next few days….

Curious about other Bruichladdich Port Charlotte tasting experiences?

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Columbian Rums – Dictador Esencia 25 year 40%

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Our last rum for the evening was a Dictador… one you won’t find to easily… available only in Columbia.

Dictador Esencia 25 year 40%, Batch 243-8

  • Colour – Dark copper
  • Nose – Very woody, wet dish rag, light varnish, dry, caramel custard
  • Palate – Loads of wood, balsa, heavy character, depth, dry, complex
  • Finish – A zing that get deeper, fruity spice then sweet

There was no doubt this was a robust, complex, rich rum. A real treat!

Here are the Columbian and The Seychelles rums we enjoyed that same evening:

It was fun to digress into a rummy evening. However, truth be told, as fabulous as these rums were… I still remain first and foremost a Whisky Lady!

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Columbia Rums – Gobernador 12 year 35%

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Back to Columbia, our next rum was from Gobernador, with the oldest rum matured for 12 years. Now this rum was a real treat!

Ron Gobernador 12 year 35%

  • Nose – Prunes, dates and plums! Christmas pudding, very rich, lots of candied dry fruits, simply gorgeous
  • Palate – Wow! Rich and complex without being overly sweet, just superb
  • Finish – Very dry finish, slightly salty at the end

For most of this, this was a clear winner. It also went beautifully with a cigar.

Here are the Columbian rums we enjoyed that same evening:

Plus a bonus rum from The Syechelles:

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The Seychelles Rum – Takamaka 8 year 40%

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Just as we were settling into our Columbian explorations, one of our tasting companions added to the mix a recent purchase from his trip to The Seychelles with a rum from La Pleine St Andre.

Takamaka 8 year 40%

  • Nose – Juicy oranges, a refreshing fruity floral citrus, sugary caramel chased by burnt sugar, vanilla essence, sour cherry
  • Palate – Sugar, spice and all things nice! Very Christmasy, clove, cinnamon, oranges, oily mouth feel, nice oak
  • Finish – A nice chocolate orange or chilli chocolate, with more clove spice

In our opinion, this was the most “whisky like” – in a good way.

Here are the Columbian rums we enjoyed that same evening:

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Columbian Rums – Baluarte 8 year 35%

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We had an evening dedicated to exploring rums… and not your ordinary easily available rums… these were personally sourced by our host from a recent trip to Columbia. His goal? Find something you couldn’t locate anywhere else…

Baluarte 8 year 35% (Dictador)

  • Nose – Citrus lemon, resin, sap, sour wine
  • Palate – Soft, very light flavours, delicate and subtle, a touch of caynne and liquorice, fruit cake
  • Finish – Long light spice, a bit bitter

Clearly this wasn’t an ‘in your face’ kinda rum, it was very light after La Hechicero, welcome for not being too sweet but not a favourite… still interesting to try.

Here is what else we explored in our rum evening:

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Columbian Rums – La Hechicera 40%

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We kicked off our Columbian rum explorations with a no age statement rum. None of us had encounter ‘The Enchantress’ La Hechicera before.

La Hechicera Extra Anejo de Solera 40%

  • Nose – Plum, a bit sharp, exceedingly sweet, toffee, vanilla
  • Palate – Pure cane sugar, dry, pineapple, orange peel, a bit of liquorice
  • Finish – Cocoa mocha finish, slightly bitter tobacco with a dash of salt

What a wonderful full-bodied way to begin our evening. No doubt this was no ordinary rum and a great way to kick off our explorations.

What else did we try?

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Colombian Rums – La Hechicera, Baluarte 8, Gobernador 12, Dictador Esencia 25

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While our base may be Bombay, we are an aventuresome lot… with one of our merry malters making his way to Cartegena, Columbia in a quest for quality rums.

Here is what he found in Columbia:

Plus another tasting companion simply had to add to the mix with another rum from his recent trip to The Seychelles:

And if this wasn’t enough, from Colombia also came a trio of “Licor de cacao” – Chilli, Passion Fruit and Orange… with narry a drop of alcohol but an experiment that intrigued our travelling man. Do yourself a favour and stop now. We all concluded we had never come across something quite so foul before. Ever. I guess some experiments simply don’t cross the oceans well…

As for the rums? Just click on the links above… you won’t be disappointed!

And if you are still hankering for more rummy explorations, check these out:

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Aroma kit flirting…

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All three of our whisky tasting groups in Mumbai have WhatsAp groups to informally exchange updates, insights, ideas, teasing and more.

A few years back, an image of a whisky aroma kit made its appearance… with a query “Should we try and buy one of these?”

If the hype is to be believed… using one of these kits will train you to “nose like an expert!!”

Now I don’t know about you, but I have no ambitions of being an expert. Neither do I want to spout “cookie cutter” impressions of a whisky.

What I enjoy most about tasting solo and with others is the journey of discovery. How an aroma reminds us of something else, evoking a memory, another context, another experience.

My nosing and tasting references also fluctuate wildly from early days in Canada to a long term sustained relationship with India, with a few dash of many other countries influences too.

My first introduction to a kit was in Winnipeg at the Whisky Bar where I was too engrossed in my whisky to want to mess it up sniffing a sample of ‘decay’.

My next opportunity was at a fellow whisky adventurers home, which began with a guessing game – sniffing “blind” to see if we could figure what it was supposed to be.

Since then, has that same kit been pulled out, used to hone our skills at recognizing different aromas?

No, We’ve just gone back to our original style of simply sniffing and discussing without referring to an aroma kit. So much for using it to train us into experts!

Here’s what others have to say:

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North Star Discovery – Islay 8 year 58.3%

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Last in our North Star trio was a whisky from its 2nd series simply named “Islay”. We sampled it blind and were floored by the reveal with an introduction to a new independent bottler who certainly seems to be bringing quality and value to his selections.

Islay 8 year (June 2008 / May 2017) 58.3% 1 of 230 bottles

  • Nose – A sour peat… dare I say it… almost headache inducing? Certainly highly medicinal. Which then slipped into ham, pineapple, mellow with a very different character than how it began, lemon tart, musk melon, some spice… shifted again this time into smoked sweet grass, green coffee beans, cut hay, quite vegetal, dry forrest
  • Palate – Starts exceedingly smooth then SPICE. Had a phenolic Islay style sweet peat not the palate with smoked pepper ham, with more fruits like grilled pineapple and apricot
  • Finish – Sweet, slightly briney and ends with something we couldn’t quite name… after going on and on and on…..
  • Water – Wow! What a difference! It really brought out the best qualities – the nose took on a peak smoke with dark chocolate and cherries, the palate augmented the sweet peat with a berry dimension and the finish then revealed beneath the salty sweet ash a light citrus sweet

As the last of our trio, we joked that perhaps the theme of the evening was spice, sweet and slow things down as each whisky took its time to fully reveal  its character.

Our talk turned to speculate the origins of this dram. For all it was sufficiently distinctively Islay to fall in that camp. But which one? We veered towards Caol Ila which, though not actually stated by the bottler, may very well be the case.

The extra fruitiness that emerged behind the peat made sense once I learned the whisky was finished in a pair of ex-sherry octave casks.

And what about the official tasting notes?

  • Nose: Medicinal, peat smoke & dark chocolate
  • Palate: Sweet peat, delicate sherry notes
  • Finish: Subtle ash, citrus & peppery peat smoke

Interestingly our findings were most aligned with the official tasting notes with water. And certainly we would highly recommend adding some generous drops to bring out the best in this whisky.

What were we fortunate to sample in our introductory North Star Trilogy?

Before it sold out, you could find it through Master of Malt for approximately £75.

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