An Unpeated Caol Ila

Here's something new, and different. I was in Whitehouse recently, and Ben had saved a bottle of ten-year old Caol Ila, cask strength, unpeated. Now we all know Caol Ila as one of the classic Islay malts. Maybe it's not as buttery as Lagavulin, nor quite as briny as Laphroaig, but it has a rich smoky flavor, full of peat. So what in the world was Ben talking about -- an unpeated Coal Ila whisky?

After attempting to research this on line, the best I can figure is that this ten-year old is a first-fill whisky. A friend of ours came back from a trip to the UK with a bottle of Glenlivet, first fill. I had never heard that term before, but apparently it means the first Scotch whisky that matures in a particular barrel. Of course, all Scotches age in barrels that were once filled with bourbon, so the term, 'first-fill' doesn't mean exactly that. Anyway, it seems that before they make the Caol Ila that we all know so well, the distillers season the barrel for ten years and make what tastes very much like a light-bodied Highland malt. In fact, this whisky is so light that it almost straddles the border between the Highlands and Lowlands - like the Tullibardine that we recently discovered. I've always liked the rich malty highlands like Macallan and Aberlour, much more so than say a Glenmorangie. But these light bodied whiskies are easy on the pallet, and very flavorful in their own way. They're also a reminder of how varied Scotch whisky can be. The distance between this ten year-old, and Caol Ila's classic 18 (Danny and I once tasted a 25 when we were traveling in Canada, but that was off the charts, and it's unfair to compare anything to a 25.) is a couple orders of magnitude greater than the entire width of, let's say, the rye whisky spectrum. All those rye whiskies, even Potrero, have a distinctive rye flavor. You could make an old-fashioned with any of them, and it would be an old-fashioned. But not so with Scotch.

I'm skipping the whole thing about its color and its nose, or that because it's not chill-filtered, it gets cloudy when you add water, and you need to add water because it's close to sixty percent. Never mind all that stuff. The bottom line is that it's delicious, and I think I need to go back and get a refill. And since it's not on the shelves any more, Ben having sold his small allotment to his regulars, I think that after I get that refill, I'll have to hide this bottle at the back of the cabinet and forget about it for the next few weeks. Otherwise I probably would drink the whole damn thing up. Wouldn't that be a shame?