Last Wednesday Bruichladdich and Steve Rush of The Whisky Wire hosted a Twitter Tasting with four of their current releases.

Steve Rush hosts about a million Twitter Tastings per year with all kinds of themes, blenders, distilleries and such. Usually he picks a few people from all possible participants and this time I was lucky enough to be part of it.

Bruichladdich is one of my favourite distilleries. Not so much the whisky, although they’ve made quite a few damn nice drams too, but the people and the place. They’re a very social company, and until recently rather independent. In a way they still are since they do everything themselves at the distillery.

They also have a good eye for provenance with their Islay Barley scheme. I love that they’ve gone as far as making ‘single farm’ whiskies, all based in the vicinity of the distillery (since everything on Islay is pretty close). Kudos!

The drams tasted were The Organic, Islay Barley 2006 (Dunlossit Farm), The Laddie 10 and the Black Art batch 3. Today I review The Organic.

Bruichladdich, The Organic at Master of Malt

Sniff:
On the nose I get spirit with sweet banana, vanilla and the greasiness of cheese. After a few seconds there’s also tinned pears, syrup and banana candy. Also some custard and a hint of white oak. Lots of barley too, with meadow flowers, like poppies. It keeps developing quickly to lose a bit of crispness and replace that with more heavy barley notes. Also almond, lemon curd and dusty barley.

Sip:
The palate it’s more sharp with mounds of barley and a little bit of wood. Grass and straw, grist and husks. Lemon, pepper, almonds, wild flowers. With a drop of water it gets quite creamy. Creme Brulee without the caramel crust. Weirdly enough, there’s also a sudden hint of Granny Smith apples and star apples.

Swallow:
The finish is light and crisp again. Wild flowers, barley, some grapes, malt wood and vanilla. There’s a slight ‘champaign’-y note too.

This, my booze-loving friends, is very nice whisky. It’s cheap too, at about € 40 it highly affordable and very much worth the money. I think Bruichladdich really nails young whisky. They’re open since 2001 and almost everything that they put out from their own distillate is very well put togehter. Jim McEwan understands how things work apparently.

This kind of stuff really goes to the ‘buy if I feel the urge to buy a bottle’ list.

Bruichladdich The Organic, multi vintage, OB, 46%, £ 34.40 at Master of Malt

Thanks to The Whisky Wire and Bruichladdich for the official sample!