Why This Bottle?
For our second post-pandemic dram, we’re taking a trip to the tropics with this Rum Cask finished Islay malt. The last time we had a Smokehead in our club was the Sherry Bomb edition – which turns out I didn’t think was that peated, nor that sherried. In the end, that didn’t really matter, however, as in a blind “versus” tasting it was incredibly well-received – coming in second place and scoring 91.88 points! Time then to see if lightning can strike twice for this bizarre-looking peaty malt.
The Unbottling
Adam’s Tasting Notes
In my initial exploration, the nose had a deep and brooding smoke with bunt maple syrup – counterbalanced with a nice dose of tropical fruit sweetness, nutty olive oil and lemon juice. The palette was a little more herbal, maybe even going towards floral – but this was definitely playing second fiddle to that dark smoke and tropical fruit.
On a later revisit, it was a bit more medicinal and somewhat sweeter – almost like fresh sugar cane. As I delved into those tropical notes a little deeper they began to show themselves as kiwi, banana and slightly overripe watermelon. This is not a particularly typical whisky flavour profile but works really rather well with the deep burnt smoke.
