Machrie Moor Cask Strenght
Ending a tasting with this peated malt
Do you know those kind of days where you just stroll through a city or town centre and into a local liquor store? Just to see whats on offer? You do right?
That is not what happened here. This purchase was intentional.
Not many people know this, but sometimes I host a tasting. Mostly groups of friends and family that want to know more about whisky, sometimes for larger groups that just happened to find me online and approached me.
Now, I do not respond very often to these requests. I like reviewing whisky, discussing it and drinking it. So you might think, so why not tell people stories and explain it? I do like that part.
It is the different palates. When I host for family and friends, more often than not they each get their own series of drams. I kinda know what they like.
If you do a tasting with strangers, sometimes it is a hit and miss.
With my latest tasting I decided to ask a couple of questions to guide me to some bottles to buy for this tasting. And my contactperson wanted a lot of "full and fruity" whisky in my line up. Ending with something peated, "but not too much".
For fruity notes, I really like to look to Arran for their whisky. And the Lochranza Distillery has a peated variant: the Machrie Moor. In this case, the cask strenght. Bottled in 2021 on 56.2% Vol., this was exactly what my audience needed. Full, fruity and peated. It is a NAS edition, no age statement was placed on the bottle.
The color is an almost sandy beach looking yellow, going towards dried hay. A twirl of my glass leaves a clear thin line, producing medium thick legs.
On the nose I get a lot of fruit, pear, fresh green apples laying on fresh cut oak boards. The hint of peat is a very faint one. Almost like a campfire smoke lingering on a field. A slightly muddy field.
Taste: At first the fresh fruit, but when the smoke flavor starts rising on the tongue, the fruit flavor almost goes towards red fruits: Dried berries, strawberry and cherry. Together with some dark chocolate and more oak. The sweet notes get richer with a form of honeyd oats.
Finish, long and very delicate. Think toffee with a slight salty tinge. Some more bitter notes of very dark chocolates and even some slight mint when breathing in over the mouth.
On the alcohol percentage it is at, I find the spirit not too sharp or overruling the other flavors. I would recon I'm using this bottle more often to guide people into trying peated whisky, or, in this case also applicatbel, cask strenght whisky.