First, an overly-long introduction! Please feel free to skip down to āOctomore 13.2: the actual review partā if you just want to know what I think; otherwise, youāre in for an in-depth description of why I think whisky reviews are mostly crap. Youāve been warned!
Iāve been wanting to try my hand at a whisky review for a while, but honestly I find most reviews to beā¦ kind of confusing. Every time I try a whisky I diligently write down notes about the experience.
I spend several minutes carefully inhaling noseful after noseful, struggling to separate odors from the whisky into concrete flavors that I can describe. Once Iāve convinced myself that Iāve been able to extract ānotes of ripe stone fruitā or something similar, I move on to tasting it only to once again wrestle with the concept of taking a flavor that my brain identifies as āwhiskyā and tease out multiple distinct components.
When Iām done, I take a few moments to try and actually focus on the whisky itself, which by this point it honestly feels like maybe Iāve neglected. I then look at my notes, trying to decide if Iām finally starting to get the hang of it, or if Iām just fooling myself.
Inevitably, doubt sets in and I resolve to ācheatā, and compare my notes to the tasting notes of others who presumably know what the hell theyāre doing and arenāt just bluffing their way through the process.
Instant regret. Every. Single. Time.
I never get it right.
Lagavulinās Offerman Edition? Instead of āPungent, peaty, woody and spicy. Flavours of cocoa and sweet berry notes. Chocolatey and warming on the palate with a lingering and spicy finish,ā I got ācopper and peach with bandaids. Tar, salt, and apples.ā
Lagavulinās 12 Year Special Release 2021? The distiller describes it as āMild, drying and soon, wonderfully aromatic; clean, fresh and maritime, with top notes of sea air and Himalayan salt, supported by fragrant smoke-dried Lapsang Souchong tea, mineral salts and light cleansing salve. Beneath these lie drier notes of cocoa powder and dried seaweed, with a squeeze of lemon zest, this salty sweetness imbued with wood-smoke from a distant bonfire on the shore.ā. Me? I got āleather and peat with black pepper and sugar cookies.ā
Its enough to make me feel like perhaps Iām suffering from some rare genetic disorder that results in my only having a small percentage of the taste buds gifted to others.
Exceptā¦ maybe, just maybe, Iām not the only one trying to bluff my way through this. Maybe everyone else writing these reviews (or at least a large portion of them) is just, for lack of a better termā¦ bullshitting their way through the process?
I started looking through reviews on whiskybase and other places, looking for patterns among reviews for specific bottlings. I havenāt found any. One reviewer will call out the āstrong notes of red fruitā. Another will talk about pineapple, peach, orange and mango (none of which are red). A third reviewer will describe it as bacon and caramel.
Maybe I was onto something with this all being a bunch of bullshit? The more reviews I read, the more I was convinced. What else should I think when one reviewer describes the nose of Octomore 13.2 as āchic, blackberry, sweet dark fruit tones ā¦ so sweet, honey undertones, heavy tar on a hot railroadā, another says āleather and flavored tobacco, raisin bread, plums, dried figs. A note of peat smoke that is not too clear wafts over it. Seems naturally sweet, but not sweet yet,ā and still a third says āHoney, citrus and salty, dirty with cow sh*t on a farm land, grassy, tart.ā
So Octomore 13.2 is sweet, but not sweet, smells like fruit, but also smells like cow shit?
Then I saw a review where the nose was described as āprecious stone, jasper, quartz, tourmalineā and the palate as " the impression of tasting diamonds".
Okay, that settles it. Iām sorry, but thatās just nonsense. Iāve done some rockhounding, so Iām well aware that tasting rocks is a thing, but you cannot tell me that any scotch smells like jasper, quartz, and tourmaline and expect me to take you even remotely seriously. Okay, wait. Maybe Iām just being close-minded. Maybe I should sniff some of my rocks before judging, just to make sure. Iāll be right back.
Nope. I just checked. My tourmaline smells exactly the same as my jasper. My quartz actually had a slightly iron smell to it, but thatās still an iron smell. Not a quartz smell.
So, anyway, the gist of all of this is that I no longer care if I get it ārightā. Plus Iām no longer convinced that reviews that call out ātasting notesā are meaningful. What good does it do for someone wanting to try a new scotch if I tell them I taste campfire and oysters, but they take it home and taste strawberries and a chocolate-covered hamburger?
Thus, my first review.
Now that Iāve got all that out of the way, hereās what I actually think about Octomore 13.2.
Octomore 13.2: the actual review part!
Iād be remiss if I didnāt start by providing some facts about this drink.
Produced by Bruichladdich Progressive Hebridean Distillers, Octomore 13.2 is a āsuper heavily peatedā expression of Islay malt at 137.3 PPM. It is bottled at near cask strength, with a 58.3% alcohol content. It is a five-year-old spirit that spent its entire life maturing in Olorosa butts from Fernando de Castilla, Spain. Basically, itās the same 100% Scottish mainland barley spirit from Octomoreās 13.1, peated to the same level, but aged in the Olorosa sherry casks instead of the 13.1ās American Oak casks.
Despite my skepticism over the traditional tasting descriptions, I still begin with smelling it. I poured it neat into a glencairn and let it rest for about 10-15 minutes.
My first impression was that this is very different than other whiskies Iāve had (Iāve tried most of the āstandardā Islay malts from Laphoaig, Lagavulin, Ardbeg, Kilchomen, etc. ). The nose is primarily sweet, although thereās a strong wine note from the Olorosa casks. But thatās too simple of a description. Thereās a lot going on in that nose. The sweetness could definitely be described as several kinds of fruit (I was reminded of plums and peach, for what little thatās worth), but I also felt there were more ārefinedā sugar odors mixed in. Behind all of that were odors that were more inorganic in nature. The end result was a deep, nuanced complexity that had me sniffing repeatedly just to explore everything that was offered. After several minutes of just smelling this, I felt like there was still more that I could find if I kept at it. But at this point I was impatient to taste it.
The taste did not disappoint, and was considerably more complex than the already impressive nose. Honestly, this stuff is crazy. As the nose suggests, thereās a great deal of sweetness, but thereās so much more going on here. After the initial wash of flavors I kept getting strong impressions of salty water mixed with the other flavors, but without overwhelming. What I found most surprising was the smoke and peat flavors. Despite the āsuper heavily peatedā 137.3 ppm, the smoky flavors were shockingly well blended with the other flavors. Where Bruichladdichās Port Charlotte 10 year uses the peat as a banner to wave in your face to remind you with every sip that youāre drinking a heavily peated Islay malt, Octomore 13.2 uses that peat as a backdrop. It is undeniably there, but it doesnāt grab your attention. Rather, you have to look for it, moving your focus away from everything else thatās going on with the flavors. My original notes from my first tasting stated āthe smoke flavor seems to bridge between the fruits and the salt,ā and I think that summarizes what I experienced pretty well.
The finish was a somewhat amusing experience for me, as this was the first time I was convinced I really tasted āchocolateā in a scotch. I also felt there were lingering notes of cinnamon, plum, and leather. Of course, after reading Bruichladdichās description of the finish, I was āwrongā as usual. I should be noticing āearthy peat notes com[ing] to the fore ā¦ along with the fruit and the nutty aromatics of the oloroso casks.ā A āsalty tang of sea breezeā was supposed to finish it all up. But after two drinks, I still have a lingering taste of chocolate mixed in with an oily brine. More relevantly, thereās a very pleasant mouth feel that lingers for a long time after finishing.
My overall impression is that Octomore 13.2 has a tremendous depth to it, with enough complexity that I had trouble focusing on just one note at a time, instead of hunting around trying to tease out aspects of the overall flavor. The full maturation in oloroso casks provided a starkly different experience than Iāve had, even with other Islay malts finished in sherry casks. This is an entirely different beast than Kilchoman Sanaig or Ardbeg Uigeadail, for example, both of which spend time in Oloroso casks. Octomore is at a different price point than those other expressions, but in my opinion thatās entirely justified. The more I drink of this expression, the more fascinated I become by just how much is going on with it.
Welcome, and thanks for a great review! The past few Octomores that I have tried have been big, heavy, peat-filled punches in the mouth - enjoyable in their own way, but a far cry from subtle. Interesting that the 13.2 does not follow this pattern; Iāll have to look around and see if I can find one.
As someone who has spent untold hours writing hundreds of these reviews (a few of which are posted here) that probably no one agrees with, I have to say youāre thinking about tasting notes in the wrong way however. The short answer is thereās never a ācorrectā tasting - itās less about writing an accurate product description and more like a film critic reviewing a movie. You describe your unique experience with the whiskey, explore what it make you think of and how it made you feel, and other readers are free to agree with some, all, or none of your conclusions.
Now for the long answer:
Letās start with remembering what whiskey actually is. We take a variety of grains, cook them to break them down into sugars, and then feed that sugar to trillions of tiny organisms that eat sugar and crap out ethanol and some other stuff. We take that, boil off some bits that we donāt want, and slosh the good part around in some burnt wood for a while. Then we add a bit of water back in and pour it in a bottle. Maybe I think the result tastes like cinnamon cookies, but you think it tastes like dirty gym socks. The reality is neither of those things are actually in this bottle! Therefore neither of us is right; both opinions are equally valid (and equally ridiculous). Mine is just more likely to be printed on the label, which is after all a marketing tool first and foremost.
So how did we come up with such wildly different tastes? Tons of reasons, up to and including genetics. Some people famously think that cilantro tastes like soap. Women are generally more sensitive to sulfides than men and therefore less likely to enjoy dry red wine. Thereās uncountable other more subtle differences based on how diets evolved over millions of years.
Perhaps more important is that we each bring our own experiences. Smell and taste are both closely linked to memory - perhaps what makes you remember your grandmotherās pecan pie makes me remember that night in college where I vomited up half a bottle of Southern Comfort. We would use very different adjectives to describe the same flavor! Similarly, your brain will make connections based on what it has seen before. Perhaps the first ever peated Islay you had, all you could taste was the smoke, but now youāre writing a complex review of a famously heavy dram. What we are currently experiencing is also important - something is going to taste very different in a smoky pub, or after a big meal, or while your seasonal allergies are acting up.
So then, are all reviews just arbitrary bullshit? Well, that might depend on how you feel about art critics! I think they drive discussion, expand horizons, and help call out subtleties and complexities that each of us may have missed in our first pass. At the very least, they can be useful in the aggregate. You might disagree with any particular review, but if everyone else is mentioning vanilla and sugar cookies and citrus in their review, you can be reasonably certain that you wonāt taste dark chocolate and coffee grounds. And if you do, that says something interesting about your particular palate that you may want to explore further. And there are a few ways that we can make our reviewing experience better and less arbitrary:
First, I find a routine is important - it sounds like you may already have this part down. To limit as many confounding variables as I can, I always review by following the same steps in the same environment, in as close to the same headspace as I can be. For me that means in my office, never after eating, never while drunk but also not trusting the first sip or two as my taste buds awaken. Some folks swear by the Glencairns but I donāt personally find the type of glassware to be all that significant - if you do, thatās something else to add to the list. There are tons of resources online about the ācorrectā way to taste whiskey, but all that really matters is you take your time and are thoughtful about each element in turn.
Secondly, it sounds like you may be struggling to isolate or verbalize what exactly it is that youāre tasting. When that happens to me, I find a flavor wheel to be a useful tool to help narrow things down. Again there are no wrong answers here but it can help you be more specific. And donāt be discouraged if you donāt come up with 20 unique flavors - some whiskey is just naturally less complex but that doesnāt mean itās less tasty.
Finally, experiment with side-by-side comparisons wherever possible! One of the best ways to notice new things about a whiskey is to directly compare it another of a similar profile. For instance, the Dalmore 12, 14, and 15 should in theory be quite similar, and you could probably identify any of them as being āa Dalmoreā. But if you try one right after another look out - thereās no mistaking one for the others; they have wildly different profiles. Other brands take the same base whiskey and then just age it in different ways - this is a great way to isolate what flavors are coming from the malts vs the finishers.
Apologies for the novel; hopefully something in here was useful to you. I hope you stick with the hobby and look forward to reading more of your notes in the future!
