Monthly Archives: November 2011

We’ve been covering the quarterly releases from Kilchoman — established in 2005, it’s the first distillery built in Islay for 124 years — since mid-2010, and finally the distillery is releasing its “Inaugural” whisky. That, of course, is a bit of a misnomer, since Kilchoman has released at least eight whiskys that I’m aware of previously — but this one is the first bottling made from barley grown, malted, distilled, aged, and bottled all at the distillery on Islay.

That said, there is precious little of it to go around — just 780 bottles are available for the U.S. market. The spirit, 3 years in Bourbon casks and 5 months in Sherry, sticks close to the Kilchoman formula, with a few twists. Though a touch hotter than the quarterly bottlings at 100 proof, it retains its smoky core. This is a heavily peated whisky on par with typical Ardbeg or Laphroaig, but unlike most extra-smoky malts, it has a certain sweetness to balance things out. Probably from the sherry finishing, that campfire gets cut down to size pretty quickly, offering apple fruit and citrus notes on the finish.

Ultimately I’m reminded a lot of the recent Laphroaig Cairdeas release, another very young whisky that still retains a lot of character and manages to pull off a sweet finish, too.

A- / $100 / kilchomandistillery.com

In 1907 Ernest Shackleton was setting off on his “Nimrod” expedition to the South Pole. Along for the ride: 25 cases of whisky from the Glen Mhor Distillery, to keep the spirits of the sailors up.

Shackleton didn’t quite make it to the Pole on this trip, and he had to leave behind some of the whisky too, left in his expedition hut. It’s been sitting there ever since, part of an international treaty… until 2010, when it was decided that some of the whisky would be returned to civilization. There’s even a TV show about it coming up:

To date, only a handful of people have tasted the recovered spirit, including our friend Richard “The Nose” Paterson, who endeavored to re-create the Shackleton whisky for modern drinkers, trying to copy it as closely as possible by using existing whisky stocks from numerous distilleries (including what remains of Glen Mohr, destroyed in 1986), with ages ranging from 8 to 30 years old.

The results are a bit like stepping back into time, 100 years gone. They drank pretty well back then, it seems. The “Shackleton,” as it’s known, is surprisingly delicate for an era when heavily peated bruisers were the norm. The nose balances peat, coal smoke, and wood with fruit — citrus and banana. On the palate, the smoke nearly disappears, with much more fruit character, nougat, and straw notes. The smoke returns in the finish: Warming and moderated.

Bottled at 94.6 proof (just like the original), it is presented in a replica bottle with replica label, right down to the label. Definitely a conversation piece — and a worthy one.

A- / $150 / enduringspirit.com