THE ARRAN MALT SINGLE CASK
Sherry Cask #430, distilled April 1997, bottled March 2013MASH BILL – 100% malted barley
PROOF – 105.6
AGE – 15 years 11 months
DISTILLERY – Isle of Arran Distillers
PRICE – $84 (discounted from I don’t know what)
WORTH BUYING? – Yes
Uncorked and tasted in The Year of No Buying (The what? 🔗 here.)
This old-label Arran bottling had been gathering dust since 2013, when it landed on the store shelf where I recently found it. It was on sale. I nabbed it. Given my past Arran experience, the age and price seemed a no-brainer.
Arran is a small island, with rich fresh water sources and plentiful wind-swept air. Though there has been distilling going on there since the early 1800s, most of it was illegal. It was only in 1994 that Isle of Arran Distillers was established, making it a relatively “young” operation by Scottish standards. It wasn’t until 2006 that Arran released their first round of 10 Year whiskies, and they’ve been going strong since, continually adding higher age statements and various blends as stocks have matured. In 2018 they opened a second distillery on the south end of the island, focused on peated whiskies intended to complement their northern unpeated distillates. The current bottle on the table is of the latter.
So here we are, one and a half weeks after uncorking and three pours into the bottle. These brief notes were taken using a traditional Glencairn.
COLOR – a dingy, dusty medium-amber
NOSE – sherry sulfur leaning more fruity than sulfuric, bright red fruit like a tart strawberry and raspberry jam, juicy golden raisins, dry and bitter oak tannin, subtle caramel sauce
TASTE – a texture at once syrupy and gritty, with all the tart red fruit notes encircled by a thick dry and bitter oak tannin outline, and now also a bit of milk chocolate laced into things
FINISH – the grittiness lingers more than the syrupiness, with sherry sulfur, darker red fruit, and subtler oak tannin
OVERALL – a battle between sweet and dry, fruity and bitter, with no winners or losers in the end
Well…? Interesting. The sense of conflict in the whisky makes the experience rather unsatisfying. And like the whisky itself, I also feel conflicted. The fruity, jammy notes are so good. Tart and sweet at once like a good homemade jam. I’m not at all a big sulfur fan when it comes to sherried scotch. But here I don’t mind it. It’s rather pleasant, actually, like that counter-intuitively pleasant smell of a freshly struck match.
But the dry oak tannins, and that gritty texture that dances about like some loud ruffian who crashed the party, are so forward as to tilt things off balance. The sweeter notes do work hard and well, though. This is what creates that sense of conflict. The whisky tastes like it’s in action. Not settled.
This experience demonstrates that just because a whisky was bottled some years ago, and at a ripe old age, doesn’t mean it’s great. And of course not. But it’s very easy for those of us in the whisky world, prone to nostalgia as we are, to slip into that line of thinking.
That’s not to say I regret the purchase at all. The pluses make a strong case over the minuses here. But they have to work for it, because the minuses have a lot of enthusiasm. Perversely, I actually enjoy the conflicted nature of this whisky. Reminds me of myself. I feel seen! 🙄😉🥃
Given the heavy sherry influence, and as I have no sherry on my bar shelf just now, I tried using this Arran as a sherry substitute in a cocktail I’ve been tinkering with lately, based on one I had at Bar High Five in Tokyo this past year. It’s comprised of Fuji Gotemba Riku whisky, walnut liqueur (acorn liqueur originally but I couldn’t find any) and sherry. The Arran did a pretty great job as understudy to the sherry.
The chance to taste something distilled in Arran’s early days will only become rarer and rarer. I’d love to compare this with a more current sherried bottling around the same age. So if you ever come across an old Arran like this, knitting a dusty shawl around itself on some shelf, and if the price hasn’t joined the Whisky Boom, give it a go. It might not be great. But it won’t be bad. Arran has a good thing going and is a distillery very worth exploring.
Cheers!
The Right Spirit 