48,9°
Distillery : Ailsa Bay - Lowlands
Hugdon Baby Bourbon Barrels and Virgin, 1st Fill, Refill American Oak Finish
Original Bottling
Limited Edition
Single Malt
Bottled in 2018
Unchillfiltered
Peated around 22 ppm
Ailsa Bay is a young distillery founded in 2007 and Sweet Smoke is their
second release. Limited to 9800 copies, but these are not all sold
yet, it seems. Yet they doubled down on good ideas to sell it. The
product followed a "micro-maturation", that is to say a very short
maturation from 6 to 9 months in very small barrels of less than 100
liters, before being transferred to more traditional caskss. In
addition, they were not content to calculate very precisely the ppm of
peat, they also established the one of sweetness, which amounts to 19 ppm. On the
other hand, not a word on the age nor on the use of dyes, with all these
experiments it happens to forget the fundamentals.
Let's Taste It :
The peat is very light, hazy, airy, it highlights fruit and vanilla,
white plum, pineapple, and it's somewhat earthy, branchy, leafy, dark
berries, heather, but also melon, lemon, clementine. It's very sweet, and also on the palate, even more with exotic fruits, papaya, banana,
lychee. Very light spices, nutmeg, cinnamon, which lead us to a proper
finish, quite long, beautiful woody roundness, straw, pastry hints,
caramel. Finally, creamy cereals.
In Short,
It is interesting, pleasant, original. We do not feel the youth
of the product. Beautiful marriage between light peat and fruit. The
price is a little high, it's true that there is creativity and quality, but
it's still a NAS.
Score : 86
To Be Listened While Sipping :
Cake - Frank Sinatra
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