Archive For September 28, 2015
Fittingly, I’m ending the Port Ellen series with a dram shared with me by my friend Henrik, who also shared the Port Ellen dram that kicked this series off. This will also be my last post before returning from The Whisky Show, as I’ll be traveling to Scotland for a few days before the show….
Like Brora, Port Ellen was only operational for 15-16 years before being finally closed in 1983. For Brora, it was simply making the old Clynelish distillery operational again as a temporary measure to make peated whisky while Islay was suffering from a drought. Port Ellen had been, before two more still were added in 1966, mothballed…
I think overall, this is my favorite expression of them all and with no further ado, the tasting notes: Port Ellen 6th Annual Release (2006), Vintage 1978, 27 Year old (54.2% ABV, NCF, NC) Appearance: Gold, very thin and slow legs coming off a long lasting ring. Nose: The peat is, by far, the most pronounced in the…
The 5th release is the third 1979 vintage in the series, with the 1st release presenting a 22 year old, the 3rd release (reviewed here) with a 24 year old and now the 5th with a 25 year old. This annual alternation between the 1979 and 1978 vintage goes on upto, and through, the 11th release,…
The 4th release of 2004 was where Diageo started reducing the number of bottles toward today’s standard of almost 3,000 bottles, although there were exceptions to that (it seems like the desired level for those years was around 5,000 bottles, with the 6th not quite making it there). It seems that the 1st release was…