Caol Ila - 18 years old

A while back Dennis Mulder send a package over to do a test for making brownies with his special recipe. To pair this with whisky he advised on a Lagavulin 16. But as I did not have that at hand the Caol Ila 18 year old was selected instead. And it was a great success and tasty... You might have seen some brownies pictures coming by of it in the last month on the social media feeds of @whiskyspeller

But after the brownies were gone, the bottle was open, so decided to get a closer look at this whisky and make a note on it. How does the whisky hold up without all the lush brownie notes? It is distilled at 43% and sadly furthermore not much information I can find on it so lets nose and taste...

The nose has some fruit and smoke notes but with a creamy soft feel to it. Getting some dark liquerish, raisins, vanilla sugar and plums between the light herbal notes. In the back is something light and fresh that almost reminds me of equaliptus.

On the palate there is lots to find for sure. Fruit richness with soft smoke and bit tar, pleasantly mixed and balanced. The smoke does not leave you with an all dried up mouth feel as with many peaty drams can do, but more a sweet red apple with caramel feeling.

Banana roasted on the BBQ with some demerara sugar and chocolate melted on it. Oh, and maybe also a ball of vanilla ice cream served next to it. Sorry if I make you hungry but sometimes notes come to me in the form of a dish that I see in front of me.

Just like the roasted piece of meat I now get that had a good rub of honey and herbs before going on the grill. Rosemary, thyme, lemon, clover honey, little bit of charcoal, vanilla, raisin, dried apricots, lush fruit cake and a side dish of greens with crispy strips of bacon, goats cheese and beetroot.

Good length sweet finish and loving this whisky for sure and wishing now that the 20cl bottle magical could grow to a full size one so I could enjoy it longer and make again some brownies with it. Scoring it an 8,5 out of 10.