Whisky : Octomore 8.3 “Masterclass”

Country/Region : Scotland/Islay

ABV : 61.2%

Cask : Ex-Bourbon (56%), Ex-wine (44%) (Paulliac, Ventoux, Rhone, Burgundy)

Age : 5 Years

Tasting : Neat in a Glencairn @ LMDW Singapore

Nose : Smokey dessert, a sweet black forest cake: chocolate and cherry liqueur.  Elements of Tiramisu, the smoke of coffee, dark roasted for expresso, and amaretto flavored cream. 

Palate : Crispy and caramelized orange flan that has been a bit burnt on the top.  Creamy almost pudding like notes and velvet mouthfeel make this an easy drinker despite it’s heavy peat and high abv.  Prominent orange rind notes give it almost the quality of a high octane ‘Old Fashioned.’

Finish : Long chocolate cake with faint tobacco smoke in the background.

Score : 6

Mental Imagine : Rich and decadent tiramisu with a side of steaming expresso.

Something Better : Octomore 7.3 (more smoke, more savory notes, less dessert, less viscosity)

Something Similar : Elements of Islay : Peat & Sherry (similar chocolate cake nose, more overripe fruit)

Something Worse : Kirkland Signature Speyside 18 Year (no peat, less body, similar black forest cake)

Notes : The X.3 editions of Octomore feature barley from Islay grown on the namesake Octomore fields.  My wife and I had the honors of popping open the first bottle of this at LMDW Singapore.  We had only tried a few Octomores, and while we enjoyed them, they usually sit outside of our typical price range.  Our evening at LMDW was a chance to splurge a little bit, dabble in a few Octomores and other heavy hitting peat bombs… but this was not what we were expecting.

A friend of ours called this bottle a masterpiece of wine influence.  I think my wife and I both found it far too sweet for our tastes.  The bartenders at LMDW seemed to feel the same way, after they tried their own taste of it, they quickly pulled out a 7.3 for my wife to taste in comparison.  

The difference was night and day; savory and smoke verses sweet and phenolic.  Bruichladdich plays around quite a bit across its whole range of products between barley types, peat levels, wine influences, and casks.  In this case, the dominating sweetness could be from the wine influence, it could also be from the barley.  Bruichladdich notes the the winter 2010 harvest was particularly bad with heavy losses due to geese, deer, and weather.  Perhaps the barley that year maintained a higher content of sugars for distillation?  Or perhaps the ridiculously astronomical 309.1 PPM (phenol parts per million) gave it its unique sweetness?  I really could not say exactly, my experience with Octomore is too limited.  Knowing each edition and expression can be quite different, this did not dissuade me from grabbing an 8.2 from the Duty Free on our way back home.  Someday we will find out of that was worth it as well.