Core Range: May 2023 | 46.4% ABV
Score: 6/10
Good Stuff.
TL;DR
Another consistently good core range. When will we see older spirit in here?
Consistency is Key for Raasay.
Edging closer to 40 has its upsides. I’m told. “40 is the new 30”. I guess folk are living a lot longer than they used to, so this milestone figure, feared by so many, really doesn’t have to bear the self-imposed gravity of marking the average fulcrum of one’s life.
When you think about it, the first 20 years of anyone’s life is figuring out what the hell is going on, making loads of mistakes, being embarrassed 90% of the time and getting over the fact that living is a problem because everything dies. The next 20 are focused on setting up paths; career paths, love paths, hobby paths and friend paths. The following 20 should be enjoying whatever paths you’ve set down, and the final 20 moaning about how busy retirement is and how much crap is broadcast on the television. So really the most enjoyable part of life starts at 40.
I know it’s only at this point in my life that I feel competent enough to hold myself as an adult, or at the very least able to navigate the daily trudge without looking askance at folk who I suspect are judging me, when in reality they’re all caught up in their own worlds, worrying about their own things. I saw a video on Instahoot where someone is commencing an interview and a passer-by cuts in front of the camera, which irks the host. The interviewee then goes on a lengthy soliloquy about how we all should be a bit more forgiving towards other people, who like us are going through this world with the same fears, apprehensions, worries and struggles. A bit of latitude goes a long way, you could say.
Life experience is just that – experiencing in life, all of its ups and downs and time-served knowledge. I have noticed, much to my wife’s chagrin, that I’m doing a lot of things dads do. Checking if the radiators are actually hot at the time at which I’d told them to get hot. Endlessly fiddling with the thermostat dial. Making noises when I sit down, stand up, kneel, reach, open doors. Tutting when someone doesn’t indicate in their car. Chatting to the postie for too long, or feeling really chuffed when I manage to rewire a plug without killing myself or setting fire to the house.
Mistakes are cool, man. We all make them too, so don’t pretend that you don’t. Owning them and learning from them is crucial to not making them again but still, some mistakes are worth repeating. Like buying whisky unsighted and untested. The thrill of the chase, the delight at finding a banger or the remorse when it’s a shunker – I’m continually making these mistakes.
Buying Raasay whisky, in any format, can never be a mistake because, despite not warming to their Distillery Exclusive Tourism of the Year 2022 Award bottling and feeling a wee bit rueful that Alasdair Day may have taken my thoughts about it badly, the whisky coming from the island east of Skye is bloody good stuff.
I enjoyed the first bottling I bought of Raasay, their 2022 May edition R-01.1, and wrote as much. Aye it might not have had the specific resonance with me personally that would have pushed it up to a 7/10, but still in the grand scheme of whisky, Raasay are doing great.
I remember standing in the chippie in Cupar, 10:30pm after a blazing Fife Whisky Festival conclusion and being given a healthy pour, into pocket copita, of some Raasay that was being poured at their table earlier that evening. So tasty alongside my haggis supper – the coastal vibes fitted beautifully. Never did catch what bottling it was, but I suspect it was one of their single cask releases. It certainly saw me all the way on the train home.
Review
Na Sia – 6 Cask Recipe: 3 peated, 3 unpeated (Rye, Chinkapin, Bordeaux),
46.4% ABV – £50 widely available.
Happy birthday this year for me, from the Crystal ladies, was a pair of waterproof socks. Handy for all occasions. Everything I could ever want for I either already have or will never have because Henry Cavill’s agent has stopped taking my voicemails.
If I want a whisky I’ll save up and buy it, and the girls know this by avoiding buying me anything Uisge Beatha shaped. Now that I’ve sort of found my area of whisky de jour, I’ve stopped buying random bottles – my exposure to new things might be taking a hit as a result, but my wallet is thanking me. I’ve been focused on finding the next “thing” that’ll set my whisky world on fire, and trying to walk that delicate path of buying stuff that I’m pretty sure I’ll get on with, without wasting money on duffers.
When my in-laws came round for dinner, to wish us both a happy birthday (my wife’s birthday is 2 days prior to mine) they brought with them gifts of Raasay gin for Mrs Crystal, and Raasay whisky for Mr Crystal. Checking the code discreetly so as to not look a gift horse in the mouth, I was delighted to see it was the R-01.2 bottling, allowing me the chance at another expression of Raasay I’ve not tried yet. Not only that, but it’s another year on since R-01.1 was released, so I can get more insight into what’s happening at chez Raasay.
I parked the bottle on the illuminated supershelves, and then packed it away unopened for our move to the Isle of Skye. When a bottle of The Hearach was procured on day zero of being a Sgiathanach, I opened the Raasay a week later to compare. What I found was remarkable.
Nose
Oven chips – salinity, salty seaside, fried bread. Farmy. Creamy – oily perhaps? Red like a traffic light. Woody – cedars and some fresh sawn oaks.
Palate
Light smokey sweet. Earthy farmy. Bright, petrichor, vinyl, bright red, almost white. Rubber fender on a sailboat. Some saltiness makes its way in here too.
The Dregs
At first the similarities to The Hearach were so close that I had to be really careful not to mix up the glasses – luckily one of the copitas I’d unpacked had writing on it. The same bright mix of fresh, zingy fruits were found in both. The same biscuity and creamy new-makey farmy flavours, that I bloody love, were found in both. It was a task to tell which is which.
After a wee while though The Hearach bends over to the sweeter side of things, leaving the Raasay to chart its own path through a more reddish tint of fruits and spices. The Raasay also presents, for me at least, more coastal. Not as coastal/savoury as Ardnamurchan, but still enough salty sea spray to warrant a mention.
There’s something about Raasay’s whisky that elevates it above something like The Hearach – it’s an edge, a sharper edge that cuts on your tongue like it’s going to be too hot, but then nothing comes of it. A wave of “heat” that doesn’t burn, but instead wraps around for a brief moment before departing to leave a really pleasant baking spiced, farmyard sweetness behind. An age related characteristic most likely. It’s still really new-makey and this element of the R01-2 comes out massively when you take the whisky outside, which I also love to do. At this point you realise just how young it is.
A good example: a few weeks before we moved I received a parcel, unexpected, from one of our Dramface readers, whisky exciters and all-round super guy. It was a bottle of Loch Lomond Distillery Edition 3 Extra-long Fermentation. A 10 year old whisky, distilled in 2012 and bottled 2023 in a small batch of 500 bottles. Oor Wally reviewed it not that long ago, and I was FOMOing like mad but gave it a pass. This housewarming gift from Drew would permit me to try it after all, and as we watched another glorious sunset begin over the Waternish peninsula, I ran out to the garage to find it.
Over the course of the evening I realised that I was ignoring Loch Lomond’s whisky to my detriment, and that Wally was right – there’s not much else out there quite like it. Once Mini crystal was in bed we turned out all the lights and marvelled at how many stars we could see sitting on our sofa. Then we went outside to see them properly and our minds were blown. In hand was a pour of the Loch Lomond because nothing beats drinking whisky under the stars, and most of the notes I was finding inside the house remained outside too, but underneath it all was a seam of that new-makey farm like smell you experience when inside a distillery warehouse. The angel’s share.
It was too cold for Mrs Crystal and I felt I really needed to capture this utterly compelling view on a camera, so got it all set up and headed back out into the cold with a fresh pour of Raasay R01-2. Immediately the difference was clear – it was like I was standing inside a warehouse.
Massively potent farmy dusty damp earthy new-make smells that, in my opinion, are what’s great about new whisky. The palate was still bright red fruits but, bolstered with the smell bursting from the glass, I have to say that my enjoyment of this Raasay whisky notched up a few places.
This whisky is three years old. Last year’s bottle was also three years old, and so it stands to reason that Raasay are releasing their core ranges not with incrementing age, but static consistency. It’ll be a balancing act for Raasay to get a product out there that’s worthy of the Raasay name and is what people expect and enjoy, whilst keeping as much whisky sleeping undisturbed to add more matured whisky to the Raasay portfolio.
The hope that I’d have seen a year’s difference in this R01-2 compared to last year’s R01-1 was a misunderstanding on my part – this is pretty consistent with the last bottle I had of core Raasay, and as such I feel it’s both great (that Raasay are putting out consistently good whisky) and reassuring that the score I had in my mind is correct.
It’s a high 6/10. With age I hope this whisky will start to shed some of the brightness of fresh, youthful whisky and the cask will begin to impart more complexity and depth. When that happens I’ll be right there with my grubby mitts, because I reckon Raasay whisky will be one of the leaders of new-age whisky.
Price is still slightly higher than some core range sub-10 year old whisky – but is still a damn shade less than quite a lot of them (Nc’Nean especially) – £50 is right around where most young whiskies should sit right now, in my opinion.
I often forget that Ardnamurchan whisky, in both core range and single casks is 5, 6, 7 and almost 8 years mature, and is unfair to compare to the 3 year old Raasay here – the casks at Glenbeg have been building their magic for longer.
The Hearach on the other hand has been released at 5 years old, and presents itself very similar to this – it’s indication that Raasay whisky is a good bit more complex than some younglings being released, and I’m betting once I wrap my rubber lips around some five-plus year old Raasay I’ll be swooning like a man possessed.
Solid.
Score: 6/10
