Review by: dustbunna
In the course of a year living in a state that is single malt purgatory, Bruichladdich has been a welcome silver lining. There hasn’t been a ton available, but I’ve been happy to have access to the entry-level offerings, none of which I had tried before, at pretty reasonable prices. This is the third of the three available, a bottle impossible to mistake on the shelf, Bruichladdich’s basic unpeated entry level malt. It has the same great stats Laddie uses for all their core range– 50% ABV, NCA, NCF– and as Laddie fans know, they are as transparent as the SWA will allow them to be about what goes into the bottle.
Every batch of Classic Laddie has a slightly different casking, though aiming for a similar profile. This is batch 20/163, minimum 6 years old and, according to their website, 82 casks went into this batch: about ⅔ 1st-fill ex-bourbon barrels, with the remainder consisting of parcels of 2nd-fill ex-bourbon barrels, French oak 2nd-fill hogsheads, some Pauillac and Pomerol ex-wine hogsheads, and a couple of hogsheads with so many different previous incumbents that I don’t even know how to describe them. That’s Bruichladdich for you!
Distillery: Bruichladdich.
Bottler: Distillery bottling.
Region: Islay.
ABV: 50%.
Age: NAS but youngest component is 6 years. Batch 20/163. Bottled in 2020.
Cask type: First-fill and second-fill ex-bourbon, various wine casks.
Price: $60 USD.
Natural Color. Non-chill-filtered.
Bottle open across approx. 2 months, notes taken leisurely across that period. Bold notes taken beneath the shoulder, regular-formatted notes taken further into the bottle past the halfway point, italicized notes taken towards the heel.
Nose: rubber, malt, vanilla, begins to show some floral/citrus notes after resting, dead wood, popcorn, coastal and sandy, a bit of peach candy.
Palate: bold and creamy ~ same vanilla/malt/rubber core follows through from the nose, icing sugar after some time, a little coastal kelp-like funk, sweetens considerably with apple juice and dinner mints.
Finish: rather short for 50% ~ ethanol zing leaves behind an earthy bitterness kind of like carrot skins, fresh mint on the tail end, rubber returns here as the fill level drops.
Conclusion: The body on this is just excellent, which I’ve found to be true for most everything I’ve tried from Bruichladdich. What it’s doing flavor-wise is less straightforward than the Islay Barley releases, and fairly funky for an unpeated Scotch, which may be down to the bizarre and complex vatting. It took a while to warm up to what it was offering, but on the whole it’s pretty enjoyable. The finish is the weak point, and in my experience drags it down quite a bit– I wish it were longer and also that it were not so bitter-dominant given how much interesting interplay there is in the nose and palate. I liked the Islay Barley 2011 more than this, and Port Charlotte 10 considerably more, but I would still really enjoy drinking this one casually with friends.
Final Score: 78.
Scoring Legend:
- 95-100: As good as it gets. Jaw-dropping, eye-widening, unforgettable whisky.
- 90-94: Sublime, a personal favorite in its category.
- 85-89: Excellent, a standout dram.
- 80-84: Quite good. Quality stuff.
- 75-79: Decent whisky worth tasting.
- 70-74: Meh. It’s definitely drinkable, but it can do better.
- 60-69: Not so good. I might not turn down a glass if I needed a drink.
- 50-59: Save it for mixing.
- 0-49: Blech.
Malt Runners 