'HERESY' SMALL BATCH DELIGHTS
Underwater barbecue
If you’ve been following the Society’s unconventional releases from our clear glass ‘Heresy’ series you may have been wondering what the next peated offering would be. As Julien Willems reports, the wait is finally over
Let your memories cast off and gently sail back to Cousteau or Attenborough’s works, and you will no doubt recall images of hydrothermal vents belching out a sooty black smoke along the sea floor.
These benthic furnaces, well past the crush-depth of the most robust tin of sardines, are nevertheless packed with crabs, prawns and other crustaceans, lazily going about their best party lives at our new Underwater Barbecue. What documentaries don’t show, though, is all those sea creatures queuing for refreshments from their local…the ‘Sunken Galleon’.
Since most of us would never manage to light a good old-fashioned coal- or better yet, peat-fired barbecue in the rain, let alone underwater, the best we can do is to set up our grill somewhere appropriate, say on the beach. But if we were to attend this allegorical underwater barbecue, where would it be taking place? Smoke and peat might give us some pointers here.
There’s something for everyone here, provided your heart belongs to the sea. On the nose you could nearly smell the sea and taste Orkney’s coastal sweet lavender smoked heather honey. But this is by far not the only peat influence here.
There is also a fair bit of medicinal Islay peat borne on the breeze, with sea spray fizzling on Lochindaal beach bonfires, conjuring up memories of kelp and charred shellfish and seaside summers gone by. So, you’d probably have to look for that galleon’s wreck in the treacherous currents weaving their paths through Hebridean islands and rocks between Orkney and Islay. That’s a lot of ground to cover, but worry not, we have a flavour map.
While a few Orcadian bourbon barrels certainly give American oak a presence (think coconut-scented sun cream and blossoming gorse shrub), the main cask influence comes from another place entirely. That Spanish galleon’s treasure is indeed not measured in gold bullions, but in spices and Andalucian wines. Strong sherry and Spanish oak influences showcase what the ministrations of this cask type and time can achieve.
Overall, though, the American oak helps balance the spicier, tannic temperament, taming things with creamy texture and extra sweetness.
If you think back to earlier years in this range, you will come across Batch 8 Battle Axe, one of the first peat-heavy representatives of the Society’s ‘Heresy’ small-batch bottlings
ABOVE: Underwater Barbecue shares some DNA with previous small-batch bottlings such as Smokus Fruticosus
So how did this proud galleon end up being laid to rest on the seabed? There are no coincidences, there are pirates about. Or Vikings, in this case! If you think back to earlier years in this range, you will come across Batch 8 Battle Axe, one of the first peat-heavy representatives of the Society’s ‘Heresy’ small-batch bottlings. Not all the blended malt used to make up the recipe was lost to the pyre of briny smoke, sooty and ashy flavours that was Batch 8. Parts of it were set aside to mature further and then combined with other casks to later create Batch 11 The Tar Pit.
The same goes for the remaining whisky after making Batch 11, which then rested further in cask before being combined with other casks to hew the super-massive Batch 15 Smokus Fruticosus into existence. Then again, the story repeated itself and the remnants of that expression were further laid down in cask and re-combined with Islay and Orkney casks to give you this new blended malt: Batch 24 Underwater Barbecue.
In a nutshell, you can trace the ancestry of this whisky to the early days of the Society’s foray into peated blended malts in clear glass.
This is certainly not the end of this peated family tree, but you’ll need to arm yourself with patience to see what the future holds for this lineage of blended malts. The remnants are now slumbering in their casks in our warehouse until such time we find suitable casks to pair them with for the next sherry and peat blended malt. Then, from the depth of the sea (or the warehouse) they will rise!
In the meantime, with clear nights ahead and the barbecue season soon to be in full swing, I’m sure there’ll be opportunities aplenty to share this whisky among friends and give them a taste of the foodie corners of the high seas, but on dry land.