Kilchoman USA Small Batch Release
Batch 03 | 48.9% ABV
Pupil Becomes Teacher
Over the week of Christmas, I returned to Connecticut to finalise the cleaning out of my office, as well as packing up and cleaning out my house. I spent three weeks in North Carolina at my new job and then drove back eleven hours to Connecticut. As a fifty-five year old man who often forgets he is fifty-five, I can safely say that I am downright tired.
I hereby declare that this will be the last time I relocate where my wife and I take centre stage in packing all of our worldly possessions, taking centre stage to carry/haul all of our furniture, boxes, etc. from our house, and then taking centre stage to pack all of that into a POD storage container or moving truck. Packing all of those items into a storage container is, without doubt, Tetris and Jenga on steroids. We lifted all sorts of heavy boxes and strangely-shaped, heavy pieces of furniture and then tried to fit them together without wasting space. Through the week of doing all of this, my body repeatedly reminded me that I am, indeed, fifty-five years old…
My daughter, Leana, came north to help us in our moving frenzy. She is four years older than my son, Finn, and frankly, is nothing like her younger brother. Finn, as some of you may recall, is of the no-initiative ilk, being so laid back he’s horizontal. (Thank you, Hamish, for that reference.) Even though Leana and Finn come from the same gene pool, it is amazing that their dispositions and behaviours are almost diametrically opposed.
Leana has always been a go-getter. Some children are born with a silver spoon in their mouths, but my daughter was born with a spreadsheet. She has always been a driven over-achiever. Initiative has never been a challenge for her. As opposed to Finn who I have tried to motivate, my task with Leana has been a constant effort to have her slow down, smell the roses, and not always burn the candle at both ends. I am very glad to say that in the last few years she has started to heed Papa Ogilvie’s advice. While she continues to be demanding and precise in whatever she does, she also now has a nice balance of spreading her wings to see, explore, and appreciate what is around her. She is an old soul, for sure.
And so, there was my daughter right by my side for the week. Packing boxes. Lifting and carrying all sorts of containers, furniture, and a decade’s worth of accumulated flotsam and jetsam. After three days of such labour, her mid-twenties body was tired but still moving at full speed. I am sorry to say that my fifty-five year old body (and my wife’s of similar age) had great thoughts of moving at full speed, but we took steady doses of naproxen sodium just to keep things together and manageable.
After three days of exertion, with both PODS containers each filled to the brim – which was a tremendous feat, and done with thirty minutes to spare before the trucks returned to take the PODS to storage – I was sapped. My wife was exhausted. Our exhaustion was plain to anyone who saw us. Before Mrs. Shaw and I turned our attention to the final, but similarly intense steps of our move, my daughter took my wife and I aside, and sat us down. Leana, the wise and compassionate soul – the one who, in her younger years, could never take a break and was motivated to go, go, go without pause – told us to take a break by taking a drive.
She had learned. She took that knowledge and guidance from Papa and was applying it. She, of course, knew all about our whisky enthusiasm. And she knew of our tales of frustration with North Carolina being an ABC liquor control state. She told us to take a break to smell the roses. She insisted that we take a last drive to our favourite liquor store to not only get us away from the house which had been a singular focus for days on end, but for us to do something that we thoroughly enjoyed. My wife and I looked at each other, and started to giggle. We felt as if we were little kids being given a cookie for good behaviour.
Appreciating the wisdom imparted to us, we got in the car, and went to our favourite local Connecticut liquor store to do some shopping. Not only was my daughter persistent about us taking a break, but hey, we needed some stock of good whiskies in North Carolina as it would be a while before we went on a shopping trip to South Carolina, ourclosest non-ABC state. A bottle of Nikka Whisky From The Barrel was secured, on discount, as well as a special Highland malt - which will be the focus of a review in the near future. I knew this was the last time we’d be making our malt rounds while in Connecticut. And with the Highland and the Nikka in our hands, we made our way to the register. And then, making our way back to the front of the store, I spied a unique box of Kilchoman off to the side, behind some other Kilchomans.
This box caught my eye as it was in an orange box. I had never seen an orange Kilchoman box before. This was a Kilchoman small batch release. It intrigued me, and reading the box led me to adding this as bottle number three to our haul. The price was a bit high, but this was a celebratory outing. Simply stated, and with apologies to Rhett Butler, I didn’t give a damn.
We returned home. Leana met us as we entered the house with a wry smile. We told her what we had purchased, and she saw the smiles on our faces and the spring in our step. She nodded, gave me a light punch in the shoulder, and simply said, “Nice job. I got you!”
The pupil teaching the teacher.
Review
Kilchoman Small Batch USA Release, Batch No. 03, 48.9% ABV
USD$92 (£84) paid. Mostly sold out, occasional dusties such as this.
I have enjoyed Kilchoman over the years. Not quite fan-boy status, but they are on a short list of favourite distilleries. I have sampled three different expressions – the Machir Bay, the Loch Gorm, and the Sanaig – and each successive expression has surpassed its predecessor in my own personal rankings.
I was a bit disturbed when I read Hamish’s recent review of the Loch Gruinart, a Kilchoman release for UK supermarket sale that seemed, shall we say, not that great. But, I put that in the back of my mind as I saw this USA Small Batch Release box. I had never heard of a USA special release, and was curious.
The name Kilchoman, its fully natural presentation, and a 48.9% ABV sealed the deal. It is largely matured in port casks, and while that gave a momentary pause, it was unique, and I was ultimately eager to get into it.
Nose
The underlay is that familiar Kilchoman peat. That peat, to me, is ashy and a bit sweet. The peat here is an “underlay” as it doesn’t take centre stage. Ever-present, but complimentary to the tart plums and stewed cherries – almost like cherries that have been steeped in a spiced rum. Mulled wine. Cocoa. Some oak sawdust from a woodworker’s shop. Inviting.
Palate
The sweet and ashy peat is married with spices and fruit, right off the bat. Those stewed fruits come forward. Plums, red berries, cherries. Dark chocolate, ginger and cloves. The robust spice profile is clove and ginger, but a dash of cinnamon is here. There is a faint chilli oil tinge, and gladly so. Starting mid-palate, the port influence of spices starts to build. The spicy edge comes forward. Moving toward the finish, a retronasal menthol-like sensation builds – in a good way. As the retronasal builds an earthy element comes into play, as well. The fruit adds a unique overlay – both tart and sweet together, if that makes any sense – and is quite nice. Quite nice mouthfeel – not oily but far from thin. I was trying to parse out a vanilla or other bourbon cask influence – and maybe it is there subtly, but I can’t isolate it. Nonetheless, this is a very nice dram. Clearly influenced by the port and sherry casks, it works well with the Kilchoman peat.
Truth be told, these are the notes from my second go-round with this bottle. The first tasting after the uncorking was a bit sharp and spicy. Mid-palate the spiciness was akin to smoked paprika, smoked ginger, and some chilli oil. I let the bottle sit a number of days, and was rewarded with the liquid recalibrating a bit, opening up, and becoming a much better experience. The nose, strangely, was largely the same.
The Dregs
When I returned to North Carolina and fetched the box, I was eager to delve into the specifics of this bottle. There is some information on the bottle and the box, but there is no QR code here. I started to think that my purchase was older and had been sitting as a “dusty” in some warehouse for years as it is my understanding that Kilchoman bottles now all have a QR code. I started to do some reconnaissance.
I went to the Kichoman website and wondered if I could find information about their small batch releases. Nope. They had some information about limited scope releases, but my bottle was not part of that release scheme. No information at all on the site. But, we whisky enthusiasts are around, and I found www.kichomania.com; a treasure trove of all things Kilchoman. And, sure enough, going through all the bottles, expressions, data, and releases, I found my USA Small Batch Release.
As it turns out, the Kilchoman I purchased was bottled in 2020. (I pulled the bottle from the box, and confirmed that fact with the bottle code.) This was, in fact, a dusty. It was bottled almost four years ago. My gut that this was a dusty was on the mark. How is it that this bottle has sat in a warehouse or the back of a store room, or on a shelf for that long?
While this is a NAS whisky, the Kilchomania website relays that the peated whisky is 50 ppm, and that:
The basis of the whiskies in the 2019 introduced new series of Small Batch Releases for selected markets is always an already finished Machir Bay vatting or Machir Bay Collaborative Vatting , i.e. a whisky with 46% alcohol strength, which was previously matured for 3-5 years predominantly in bourbon barrels and 5-15% in oloroso sherry casks. This vatting is then married with an additional special cask.
In autumn 2020, the USA Small Batch No. 3 was released, which meant that the United States had the most Small Batch Releases at that time. A special feature is that the additional cask – a port hogshead – makes up 50% of the batch, which is much more than usual for the Kilchoman Small Batch Releases. The port character is therefore also very distinct in colour, smell and taste.
In addition to what I gleaned from the Kilchomania website, the back label indicates that the liquid aged in ex-bourbon casks and the oloroso sherry casks were both matured at 46% ABV, and then the whisky aged in the port hogshead was “at natural strength”. Not sure exactly what ABV “natural strength” is, but it is enough to have bumped the entire vatting up to 48.9% ABV. The back label also confirms the composition of whiskies in my glass. 50% was matured in a port hogshead, 47% was matured in ex-bourbon barrels, and 3% was matured in oloroso sherry casks. The port clearly has a significant influence on this whisky. The reddish hue of the liquid shows the port influence, and the wood-fruit-spice notes on the tongue confirm the port characteristics.
I am the first to admit that I’ve not had many port cask influenced whiskies. Two memorable ones were Tomatin and Virginia Distillery Co., expressions. I compared and reviewed them, roughly a year ago. Many of my whisky comrades are quick to say that port-finished or matured whiskies are hit-or-miss as the port often over-shadows the distillate. As said above, when I first uncorked the Kilchoman here, it was fine at first blush, and then mid-palate to the finish it was hot, spicy, and more of a smoked paprika in my mouth than rich fruits and spices. As with my first experience with Machir Bay, I let the bottle sit for a while. And, as with the Machir Bay, this has opened up nicely.
I cannot adequately compare the two aforementioned port bottles. The Tomatin is long since drained and appreciated. I do have some of my Virginia Distillery Co., bottle left, but as that bottle is not peated, it is trying to shove a square peg in a round hole for the sake of comparison.
However, I still have half a bottle of my Kilchoman Sanaig with me. I love the Sanaig, and after doing a side-by-side with this bottle, I am glad to say that this bottle holds its own with the Sanaig. As such, I would give this a 7/10 score, as I did with the Sanaig. There are some times that I look for a more fruit-and-spice-forward dram, and I am glad I now have a peated expression that fits that bill. This USA small batch will fit the bill quite nicely. To be clear, the Sanaig – along with Port Charlotte 10 – are the peated whiskies I reach for when I want to scratch my peat itch, but this USA small batch is not far behind.
All that said, I paid $65 USD for my Sanaig. And while I was in exhaustion I-don’t-give-a-damned-mode when I bought the USA Small Batch, a $30 increase in price is something that I can’t ignore for a bottle that isn’t head and shoulders better than the Sanaig. Thus, what would have been a 7/10 score is bumped down to a 6/10. Still good liquid, but I can’t help the comparison with the Sanaig.
Fascinating to find a dusty. Glad to have this in my collection. And I am so very happy to see my daughter living the priorities instilled in her – being there for family, working hard, and making sure to take some time to breathe and smell the roses…and that she was able to make sure to remind her Papa of these lessons.
As this review was going to press, I received an e-mail from Kilchoman Distillery in response to an inquiry that I had sent after opening my bottle. I was curious to know more about what was in my dram, what kind of port, the age of the whisky, etc. The good folk at Kilchoman forwarded a note from Robin Bignal, the production manager. In part, the e-mail relayed that the port matured whisky was a 6 year old vintage and the ex-borbon and sherry matured whiskies would have averaged 5 years old. Moreover, Batch No. 3’s port was a Ruby Port cask. He continued by relaying a comment from James Wills, the US Brand Ambassador:
“Normally we wouldn’t use such a large proportion of Port matured whisky for a Small Batch however USA Batch No.1 [another port cask offering] was such a success that we thought we’d revisit this style but this time with even more Port cask influence.”
Thank you, Kilchoman!
Score: 6/10
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