Blair Athol 11yo
Brig O’Perth Vino De Color | 54.7% ABV
Score: 7/10
Very Good Indeed.
TL;DR
All about the cask - is that a bad thing?
No more whisky. but…
Sometimes my inner whisky geek gets the better of me. I had no intention of buying any more whisky for the month and then bang - something jumped out at me from my mobile phone screen and before I knew it, £75 was winging its way out of my account.
Well, £80.95 if I'm being pedantic and including postage. It’s something we have to be careful of when we are passionate about whisky. We can’t buy them all as much as we may want to. The flavour chase is real my friends, and that big pang of FOMO we have to wrestle with when our whisky budget is running dry is a feeling most of us will have experienced at some point in our journey.
Thankfully for me, all it meant was a couple of Christmas presents were to be bought in the last week before the big day when I next got paid, rather than being organised weeks in advance. It was a small price I was willing to pay to get that rush of endorphins as I entered my debit card details and hit the complete purchase button. I was then free to spend the next couple of days impatiently checking my email and tracking the delivery, waiting for the next endorphin hit when I opened the box. I know I should be more chill about such things, but once the order is placed, I want it in my hands straight away.
The fact the bottle in question was an 11 year old single malt from Blair Athol barely registered as I was reading the description, which is unusual, as the distillery and age of the whisky would ordinarily be first and foremost when I am considering a purchase, along with price of course. The one piece of information which attracted my attention was the cask the whisky had been finished in for its final three months. An antique cask that was more than 150 years old and is believed to be one of the last few to contain a highly concentrated, syrupy, dark, rich unfermented Pedro Ximenez grape juice and dark sherry mix called Vino de Color. In an era where paxarette has been banned by the SWA for more than 30 years, and sherry casks are seasoned to order for whisky producers, the chance of trying a whisky from a genuine sherry cask with history seemed like a no brainer.
I admit I’d never heard of Vino de Color before. We are much more used to seeing Oloroso, Pedro Ximenez, Fino, Amontillado, Palo Cortado or even Manzanilla sherries used for whisky maturation. Could you imagine how expensive this bottle would be if it was from an antique Oloroso cask? All I had to go on with Vino de Color was the description I used above.
Doing some online research I was able to find a few more tidbits, but it isn’t a sherry variety you will find lots of pages dedicated to. What I discovered is that it’s one of the oldest sherry wines in Spain and was mentioned by Shakespeare in King Henry IV in 1597. It isn’t actually a pure wine as it’s made with a mixture of fermented and concentrated grape juice, and has often been used for flavouring and colouring other sherries. It sounds like the E150a of the sherry world, so let’s hope it doesn’t taste like it. By all accounts, it’s quite similar to paxarette, which many would say is sorely missed - but I don’t have the experience to have an opinion on that particular discussion. Maybe a producer would be bold enough in future to release a whisky using paxarette again, even if regulations would mean labelling it as a spirit drink rather than a whisky. They could perhaps put identical spirit into two cask: a seasoned sherry cask and one where paxarette has been used. It would be an interesting experiment.
I’ve only discovered two whiskies which had previously been finished in a Vino de Color cask. One was a young Bunnahabhain from independent bottler Artful Dodger, which appears to have less than favourable reviews. That same cask was then used a second time for an Islay blended malt under the Cut Your Wolf Loose branding, which appears to have been much better received. With this Blair Athol being the first time the cask has been used and without the peat of that Islay blend to work with the strong influence of the cask, it made me worried I’d been drawn in by the story and had squandered my money. But it was too late, the purchase had been made by that point.
Despite being rinsed before it was used, the influence the cask has had in those three short months has turned the whisky into a liquid only a shade or two lighter on the colour chart than Coca-Cola. Will any of the influence the Blair Athol spirit has had be evident in the glass?
Review
Blair Athol 11yo, Brig O’Perth, Vino De Color Finish, 54.7% ABV
£75
Nose
A big hit of sweet Demerara sugar upfront with jammy red fruits – blackcurrant, cherries and prunes – marzipan covered Christmas cake and cola cubes. There’s a prominent espresso coffee aroma, which compliments the sweet notes, along with hints of balsamic, wood furniture polish and leather.
Palate
It has a nice weight to it and drinks well at full strength. It’s a darker experience on the palate than it was on the nose. The sweet, jammy red fruits and brown sugar come in first, before the darker notes come in. There’s espresso coffee, which is quite intense, and if you are a fan of coffee like I am, you’ll really enjoy that aspect. There’s also black treacle, cherry cola, aniseed and a little peppery spice, with prune juice and raisins adding to that deep, dark richness. The balance between the sweet sugar and fruits and the more bitter darker notes is really good again here, with neither allowed to dominate the experience. The finish is moderate in length, and gives treacle toffee, coffee with cream, dark chocolate and buttercup cough syrup.
The Dregs
This whisky is all about the cask. The cask is the story and its unique selling point. It’s not only wearing a sherry overcoat, but also a turtle neck sweater, hat, gloves and scarf too. Blair Athol isn’t a distillery I’m as familiar with as some others, but I can’t detect much, if any of the character of the distillate. You’ll often hear a reviewer give a negative view of a whisky when that signature is lost and it could be effectively from any distillery and I have held those sentiments on a number of occasions too. As much as I acknowledge that point, if a whisky is good, does it always have to matter where the flavour comes from? Casks are an important part of the finished product and if a cask delivers something unique, flavourful and with a character of its own, then I can be pretty content with that. We can enjoy a more distillate-forward spirit by reaching for something else on our shelves.
It’s amazing to me the cask this whisky has spent a short few months in is more than 150 years old. It’s been in use since the time Queen Victoria was on the throne, and before the light bulb and motor car were invented. My dad is old and this cask is older than his dad, and his dad’s dad, and most likely his dad before him. Sorry dad, but I find that a fascinating thought.
I think it’s a really good, flavourful and interesting whisky and one very much worth trying if you’re able. You’ll struggle to find anything else quite like it.
Score: 7/10
Tried this? Share your thoughts in the comments below. RT
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