Rare Batch 66

If there is a missing link between petrol and whisky, I would say it’s hiding in this Caol Ila. Take some sardines in a mix of olive oil and brine, add some sandalwood ash, some red diesel, graphite oil, mineral salts and a whole farm shed full of tractors, and you might get something approaching this. A sinewy, handsome, bastard child of 1972 Brora and 1970 Laphroaig.

There’s salted game meats, leather, wood ash, tarragon, pure lemon juice drizzled over oily sheep wool, hessian and grilled shellfish. A perfect intersection of medicinal, seashore, farmyard and peat fire elements. The power, precision, purity and beauty are just immense. Add some water and we’re off into the stratosphere. Everything just knits together perfectly, with a few more flowers and fruits to tie it all together.

Unreal delivery. Just breathtaking. An immensely textural, fat, glycerol and oily mouthfeel. Palpable and chewable stuff. An avalanche of medicines, ash, herbs, wood char, raw peat smoke, hessian, camphor, tar and embrocations. Mind-meltingly silly and heartbreakingly brilliant whisky. Not much point in going on really.

The thing about these old Caol Ilas when you add water is that they become more powerful and complex, but also more integrated and complete as well. It’s a development that’s almost unique to this distillery from this era. It puts them among the best whiskies ever made, in my humble opinion.

Endless and justifiably censored.

What’s wonderful is that you can really feel the shared DNA between this and the 1968 50-year-old expression. I think this one is slightly better by a single point on a technical scale, for its sheer potency and brilliant preciseness. However, in terms of pleasure and unabashed thrill, there isn’t much between them. They both serve to highlight what historically incredible whisky Caol Ila was making in the late 1960s. A legendary bottle, and rightly so.

A nightcap in the restaurant at the end of the universe.

(Image courtesy whiskybase.com)

It’s incredible that this kind of cask still exists. This is very much in the same ballpark as the old bottlings of late ‘60s Caol Ila, but with more subtlety. It’s wet rocks, whelks, seawater and lemon juice, but also some very grassy olive oil, pine nuts, wool, hessian, gun metal, anchovy paste and green tea. Wax, petrol, brine, preserved lemons, a gentle sootiness... the levels of integration, elegance and concentration are just superb.

Give it time to open up and there’s a profoundly complex medicinal depth, along with multiple roots and herbs. Gentian root, yellow flowers, dried seaweed, mineral oils and also a kind of peat and saline profile, which is almost unique to this whisky. A single drop of water makes it leaner, more precise, lightly ashy, mechanical and somehow more powerful and direct. Things like grilled fish on wood char, bonfire smoke and rock pools.

Stunning delivery. Layer and layer of oils, peat smoke, brine, herbal extracts, sea salt, pickling juices, green pepper, herbal teas, citrus rinds, Lapsang Souchong, mineral salts and earthy mushroom notes. Spices, old rope, hessian, tar, lime jelly and ointments. Just mesmerising complexity. This kind of whisky is hard to properly do justice to in a measly tasting note. A little water and it’s just perfection. Immense complexity, concentration, texture, length and power. A pure, perfect whole, if you see what I mean.

Long, long, long (to quote The Beatles’ guitarist George Harrison). It is never less than precise and has this sense of deliberateness, like it knows where it’s going and what it wants to do. All you can do is follow. Immense whisky.

In my humble experience, I’d say this was a whisky quite unlike any other I’d tasted in terms of its character and flavour profile. It is the kind of dram that controls you; submit, and let it lead the way. I know it’s an expensive bottle, but if you can find a way to taste it I would recommend doing so. Sheer poetic brilliance and the kind of whisky that is liquid history in your glass. I fell in love with this one.

A celebratory toast after a cudgel duel at dawn.

Powerfully ashy, lemony, citric, briny and with this kind of raw mixture of different smoky notes – boiler fug, kiln smoke and bonfire smoke. However, there’s also something faintly tropical nesting quietly in the background. A slice of banana, a wee thread of kiwi and a suggestion of pineapple. There’s also a pretty rough and ready, gravel-accented mineral element about the whole thing. Pretty powerful, old-school Islay malt whisky. Water brings out pure seashore notes: wet rocks, vinegar, chalk, limestone, crushed sea shells, scallops, seaweed broth.

Big, crystalline, pure, lemony and peaty. Seawater, peppered mackerel, some glazed citrus fruits, iodine, tar, and anchovy paste. Lots of stuff sloshing about in the depths and still with this big, oily, sooty, smoky pervasiveness. Notes of Dettol-drenched sheep’s wool, kippers and antiseptic mixed with brine. Ballsy and rather grin-inducing stuff. With water it went to the seashore on the nose, but on the palate things get farm-like and funky. Some earthy, muddy notes, diesel, straw, tar, more antiseptic and umami paste. Also, hummus, salted pitta breads, black olive tapenade, hot grist... There’s plenty going on in this one.

Long, sooty, lemony, lightly ashy, very smoky and pristinely salty and peaty. Unequivocal stuff.

It’s extremely good. Is it Caol Ila? I think so... some other ‘76 Caol Ilas had this kind of gutsy farmyard/seashore mixture that sort of nodded in a familiar way towards Brora. But who knows, could it also be a rogue Lagavulin? I doubt it, but unless someone from the elusive Society of Scotch Malt Connoisseurs gets in touch I’m not sure we’ll ever know for sure. 

Something for the hipflask while canyoning in the Julian Alps.

(Image courtesy whiskyauctioneer.com)