Single Malt Scotch – Sample Room Range | 58.5% ABV
Score: 6/10
Good stuff.
TL;DR
This is what we’re after – good, interesting, transparent whisky. In 70cls pls
A Question of Choice
Sometimes, there’s so much choice that it can start to feel a little overwhelming.
This was something I found myself thinking last Friday, as I sat at home, scrolling through Netflix. The children had gone to bed, I’d poured myself a whisky, and I was ready to relax and watch a film with my feet up. All I had to do, was choose something to watch…and that was where I ran into problems.
In my house, we have more choice when it comes to TV, than any normal person could ever possibly want. Along with Freeview, we now have Sky Stream. As part of Sky Stream, we also get Netflix. My partner recently signed up to a free month of Prime, so we currently have Prime Video as well. I also have two young children, so over Christmas, I was persuaded to take out a subscription to Disney Plus.
And that’s just the stuff that we pay for. As if that wasn’t enough, there’s also BBC iPlayer, ITV X, 4OD, UK TV Play, and the free trial of Apple TV that we recently activated because…well, we can never find anything to watch.
The point I’m making is that nowadays, when it comes to TV, we’re spoilt for choice. So much so, that often, choosing feels impossible. When I were a lad – cue the Hovis music – we had four channels, and then, sometime in the 90s, they added a fifth channel that nobody ever watches.
On paper, five measly channels sounds terrible, but actually, when I think back to my own childhood, I don’t remember there ever being nothing on. Certainly, we weren’t so overwhelmed with choice that we couldn’t bring ourselves to settle on anything. That’s what happened to me though, last Friday. With literally thousands of films to choose from – a digital library that would’ve dwarfed the selection of your average Blockbuster Video – I found myself unable to make a decision, and I ended up going to bed without watching anything.
All of which brings me to whisky. A few days ago, I found myself struggling to choose a bottle to buy. I was on my way to meet a friend for coffee, when I happened to walk past The Whisky Shop. I don’t normally bother with The Whisky Shop – in my experience, they tend to be expensive – but I had some time to spare, so I figured I may as well poke my head inside.
Having already blown the whisky budget for the month, I told myself that I’d just pick up one bottle and that I’d limit myself to fifty quid and not a penny more. I think you know how this story ends.
There’s a paradox, when it comes to the question of choice; the more choice we have, the harder it is to find something that we’re happy with. Just like trying to choose a film to watch on Netflix, trying to choose a single bottle of whisky in a bricks-and-mortar whisky store, is virtually impossible. There are simply too many options, too many possibilities, too many potential gems that you might miss out on if you don’t choose wisely.
Faced with this much choice, there’s really only one thing for it, and that’s to choose several. Blow next month’s whisky budget. And the month after that. May as well cancel the family holiday as well. As for Christmas, just tell the kids they’ve been naughty and give them a lump of coal. Kids nowadays have too many toys anyway.
So it was that I left The Whisky Shop, having failed spectacularly to stick to my original one bottle limit. I bought five bottles in total, and the first thing I did when I got home was bin the receipt, lest Mrs Mackay should catch sight of it.
One of the whiskies that I bought was an InchDairnie. It’s young, it comes in a 50cl bottle, and the price I paid for it did nothing to dissuade me from my earlier assertion that The Whisky Shop are expensive. All that said, it’s good whisky and I’m enjoying it a lot.
If you’ve never tasted InchDairinie, then join the club – until the other day, I hadn’t, either. Built in 2014, over an eighteen month period, the Fife distillery utilises a mash filter, rather than a mash tun, something that results in a higher yield. It’s all very technical, and way beyond the humble expertise of this particular whisky botherer, but if you’re interested, there’s plenty of information about it on the distillery’s own website.
Their most notable release so far has been RyeLaw a single grain Scotch whisky that was distilled in a Lomond Hill Still, and which I still haven’t been able to persuade myself to part with £110 for.
Unlike RyeLaw, the InchDairnie that I picked up is a single malt. Part of their Sample Room Range, it’s called Pitkevy, and is one of three releases. The other two expressions in the range are:
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Balgonie – a peated expression that’s made from 74% rye whisky and 26% single malt.
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Leven – a 50/50 vatting of rye whisky and single malt, matured in Amontillado casks.
As to Pitkevy, according to The Whisky Shop website, it was matured in ‘a combination of smoked single malt whisky, refill and Palo Cortado casks,’ making it not only the first InchDairnie I’ve ever owned, but also the first whisky I’ve ever tasted that has some Palo Cortado in the mix.
Exciting stuff then, and needless to say, I was keen to get it home and pop the cork…
Except that it has a screw cap.
Review
InchDairnie Pitkevy 7yo, Single Malt, Sample Room Range, The Whisky Shop Exclusive, 50cl, 58.5% ABV
£59 & exclusive to the The Whisky Shop
Before I get into the tasting notes, it would be remiss of me not to touch upon the subject of price. I paid £59 for this whisky, which for a 50cl bottle of seven year old liquid is expensive. This is particularly true, when you consider that it’s from a distillery that most of us have no previous experience with.
Admittedly, Palo Cortado is fairly rare, so the casks they’ve used here are no doubt pricey, but all the same, 50cl always strikes me as a bit cynical, perhaps even a tad disingenuous. It’s as if the distillery is hoping that somehow, we might not notice that the bottle we’re buying is missing 20cl of valuable liquid. Frankly, I’d rather that they just put it in a 70cl bottle and charged us more. It would still be expensive, of course, but at least it wouldn’t feel so smoke and mirrors.
The bad news is that this InchDairnie is an exclusive for The Whisky Shop, so unless it turns up on the secondary market, you’re unlikely to find it any cheaper. It’s limited to 390 bottles, although it does say Batch 001 on the label, so no doubt there will be more releases, once this one’s sold out.
Gripes aside, there’s a lot to recommend here. This is a whisky that’s pitched squarely at enthusiasts. The information on the bottle details the cask types, the batch number, the bottle number, the date that it was filled into casks, and the date that it was drawn. It gives us the name of the person who drew the whisky, and it’s bottled at cask strength.
More unusually, it gives us the parts per million of phenols – 5.8 ppm – and even the esters in grams per 100 litres of alcohol. It’s natural colour, it’s non-chill-filtered and the label is designed to look like a distillery hand-fill, all of which makes it an interesting addition to the collection.
It is, put simply, a whisky to geek out on. It’s damned tasty as well. If it came in a 70cl bottle for £59, it’d be getting a higher score.
Nose
On the nose, I get fudge, peanut butter, chocolate, and an orangey, Southern Comfort sort of note. There are baking spices, some maple syrup, and some smoked meats, maybe smoked prosciutto or smoky bacon. I also get a gluey note, and some pencil shavings as well. After sitting in the glass for a few minutes, an earthy, vegetal element starts to appear.
Palate
Despite the low ppm count, I can definitely taste the peat. It’s subtle, don’t get me wrong, but it makes itself known. It’s an industrial sort of smoke – think coal, rather than bonfire – and it reminds me of the sort of smoke you sometimes get on Campbeltown whiskies. That savoury character that I picked up on the nose presents itself in the form of an earthy, mushroom note on the palate. There’s also some Marmite here, perhaps even Twiglets.
There are some sweeter aspects as well: I get salted caramel, fudge, milk chocolate and candied nuts, perhaps even Reece’s Pieces. Some pepper arrives in the development, and lasts throughout the finish, wrapping itself around that fudgy, caramel note that plays all the way through.
Considering the granular nature of the information on the label, I’m surprised that there’s nothing about the percentage of each cask type that they’ve used in the vatting. There’s no QR code on the bottle, so unfortunately, I haven’t been able to find out any information about how much sherry vs bourbon is in the mix.
To my palate though, it feels as if it leans more into the sherry. I wouldn’t go as far as to call it a sherry bomb, but it’s fairly sherry forward. If you like ‘dirty’ whiskies, like Edradour and Benromach, then this one would probably sit somewhere in your wheelhouse. It’s not complex, but what it lacks in complexity, it makes up for in character. Certainly, it’s not the typical, gentle sort of whisky we often associate with the Lowlands.
The Dregs
I don’t have the statistics, but it’s a fair assumption that the majority of people who buy single malt tend to purchase just a handful of bottles each year, and that, unlike the average Dramface reader, they buy most of their whisky from the supermarket, rather than from the sorts of specialist retailers who sell bottles such as the one I’m reviewing today.
Often, the people who buy these whiskies are just looking for something to drink that’s a bit nicer than a standard blend, and there’s nothing wrong with that. That’s why the likes of Glenfiddich and Jura – with their run-of-the-mill presentations and their lower price points – are so ubiquitous. When it comes to single malt, if we think about the whisky buying public as being on a spectrum, then these casual drinkers are at one end.
At the other end, you have people who view whisky as a luxury commodity, similar to designer shoes or watches. These are the drinkers that distilleries like Macallan and Dalmore market their whiskies to. Often, amongst drinkers at this end of the spectrum, there’s a built-in assumption that the more expensive a whisky is, the better the quality. Indeed, the premium that such distilleries command is often what attracts people to their brands in the first place. I’m generalising here of course, but I’m sure you follow my point.
All of this leaves enthusiasts like us, somewhere in the middle of that spectrum; squeezed between the casual drinker at one end, and the high end whisky buyer at the other. We often find ourselves overlooked because, whilst we spend a lot more money than your average Glenfiddich drinker, there are significantly less of us, so as a portion of the market, we’re not as lucrative.
We’re not invisible either, though, and bottles such as this InchDairnie are testament to that. Newer distilleries, such as this one, with this kind of release, clearly see us. Yes, let’s forgive but not forget the horrendous misstep with their baffling RyeLaw presentation which, after Wally and so many others pointed out the flawed strategy, has hopefully helped guide these follow on releases.
These newer distilleries don’t necessarily have the sway – nor in many cases the capacity, or even the desire – to get their bottles onto the shelves of Asda, Sainsbury’s or Tesco; neither do they have the brand power or the history that allow the likes of Macallan and Dalmore to target the upper end of the whisky buying spectrum. They rely, therefore, on us, the pernickety, curmudgeonly enthusiasts – with our obsession with natural presentation and full transparency – to buy into what they’re doing. To open, drink and talk about their expressions.
All of which is why, in my opinion, the whisky landscape is in a better place than we often give it credit for. Admittedly, prices are higher than they’ve ever been, but there is still good whisky out there that’s affordable and which is aimed squarely at us.
Despite its stingy 50cl bottle size, this InchDairnie is an example of that. It’s a reminder that there are plenty of distilleries who see our little section of the market, who hear us banging the drum for naturally presented, fully transparent whisky, and who want to answer our call.
Above all, it reminds me that when it comes to whisky – just like when it comes to television – there is plenty of choice out there. If anything, there’s more choice right now than there’s ever been. As enthusiasts, that’s something to celebrate.
Perhaps, then, choice isn’t such a bad thing after all.
Now where did I put the TV remote?
Score: 6/10
