Cù Bòcan 12yo Rum Cask
Official Bottling Released Batch 01 2023 | 46% ABV
Score: 5/10
Average.
TL;DR
Reminds me of good times, but ultimately disappoints
Three Scotsmen Walk Into a Bar
I don’t know if you heard, but a little sports competition took place in Paris this late July. I’m sure most of you tuned in to the Olympics opening ceremony. I sure did, and I was mighty impressed.
I thought it was really well written and the different acts were smartly designed and very well executed. I don’t know about you but I was left speechless after Gojira’s performance, especially since I didn’t know they were going to be part of the show. The whole show was beautifully choreographed, down to Celine Dion’s beautiful rendition of L’Hymne à l’amour.
The thing is, I did not expect it to be this good. To be perfectly honest with you, it seemed for the last few weeks that these Olympics were going to be a big mess. Crossing the river has been almost impossible for two weeks, the price of a metro ticket has doubled while bike lanes were closed, and, as of the time of writing, the triathlon race could barely be maintained, because of alarming pollution levels in the Seine over the last few days.
There was for me and many people here in the French capital the expectation that this would somehow be a fiasco, some even wishing for it to be one, just to have another excuse to ridicule our political class. I know, I know, how French is that? In the end, the weather has greatly improved - it still rains every three or four days, but that’s better than every day and the games are going along fine. Antoine Dupont is an olympic champion, the metros aren’t as crowded as they were announced to be, and happy tourists are enjoying Paris without much of its grumpy Parisians.
The opening ceremony actually took place at the same time I was having a little party at our wine bar for one of our coworkers’ last day. Only the staff were there, and we watched the ceremony on a laptop while tasting wine and eating a few bits of cheese and cold cuts. No clients entered the premises all evening, and we didn’t expect any. Until, that is, a group of three middle-aged Scotsmen, who got absolutely soaked at the ceremony, decided they badly needed a few glasses of Bourgogne.
One of them, Pete, actually works at a whisky bottling plant around Glasgow, so we got chatting, about wine, whisky, what they needed to remember from the show to tell their wives, and who the hell was this naked blue guy coming out of a fruit basket. I poured them a wee tasting size dram of one of our own whisky bottlings, and Pete was instantly making plans to introduce me to one of his friends who might be able to import our very humble bottlings to the UK. Not that this is ever going to happen, but this is just a measure of how we all got along this fine evening. Towards midnight, after enjoying three bottles of some of the best wine we offer, they went back to their hotel, not without leaving us a considerable tip. True gentlemen indeed. Pete even left his email for me to notify him when I hit Glasgow in November.
Sometimes things end up being nicely different from what everyone expected. Let’s see if this is the case for this Cù Bòcan 12.
Review
Cù Bòcan 12yo, Caribbean Rum Cask Matured, Batch 01 Release, 2023, non-chill filtered, natural colour, 46% ABV
£65 paid
This is yet another bottle that was purchased at RRP in the Royal Mile Whiskies shop in good ol’ Dun Eideann last february. Yeah, I packed the suitcase tight! I’m usually not the biggest fan of unusual types of maturation, preferring to stick to the holy trinity of casks: ex-bourbon, ex-sherry and refill.
Yet I was feeling adventurous when I crossed the threshold of this well known establishment, and enquired about this 12yo Cù Bòcan I had not seen anywhere before. The initial “rum cask” statement on it made me wary, but I was offered to taste it as they had an opened bottle. Me and Mrs Fife were quite pleasantly surprised, being presented with a fresh and lively summery whisky. We tasted it from those practically useless plastic mini cups though, so no thorough analysis was possible, but I was willing to give it a go.
Back home, I opened it and was a bit underwhelmed, as it wasn’t bursting with fruity flavours like I remembered my sample to be. Not bad by any means, but lacking in engagement a little bit. I also paid £65 for it, which is not completely bonkers but still an important sum of money to ask for a 12 year old. I consequently had two or three drams from it over the next few weeks, but it showed little change. It’s now a few months since I tried it, and I’m curious to see if it got better or not.
Score: 5/10
Average.
TL;DR
Reminds me of good times, but ultimately disappoints
Nose
Opens juicy and somewhat tart, on cooked pineapple and passionfruit. Grilled pepper. Pretty mild nose. Dried lemon. Very little smoke, to the point I’m not even sure I’m actually picking it up rather than imagining it because I know it was peated. Tiny hint of vegetal freshness, maybe celery. After a while, I can’t even pick up the fruits.
Palate
No tartness here, and not as fruity as expected. More on spices, like white pepper and fresh ginger. As with the nose, no change with water.
The Dregs
Well, this is quite a simple whisky. A bit too simple even, considering the price. As for the peated aspect, I’m rather victim to a peat blindness on the nose, but usually, the palate helps me. Nothing here. This is not really a critique, as I’m quite fond of unpeated whiskies, and I didn’t buy this one specifically expecting a massive burst of smoke - Cù Bòcans are usually softly peated in my experience - but the peat could maybe have lifted this whisky up to a 6/10.
I suppose the fruity aspect on the nose could be from the rum cask, but I’m not even sure, as it could very well stem from the fermentation. The cask strikes me as a quite tired one, which is definitely possible, considering many rum casks used in the whisky industry were previously used to within an inch of their life by distillers in Guyana or Jamaica. I’ll try to get more info in September during trade shows if I cross paths with Scott Adamson, Tomatin & Cù Bòcan’s brand ambassador and master blender.
I’m not one to say things like that very often, but I think this whisky would benefit from a finish, in another fresher rum cask, or even virgin oak. It is drinkable, and without any obvious faults, but it also lacks in flavour. I will end up finishing the bottle, but it might take a long time, as I’ve got much more engaging whiskies to sip first.
I was hoping for my first impression to be right, but in the end, I can’t help but feel slightly disappointed by the liquid.
As for the musical accompaniment for this whisky, I would have put forth Gojira, but I already linked to one of their songs in a previous review. Let’s listen to something completely different and celebrate Japan’s many medals at these Olympics, by streaming Kenji Endo’s Curry Rice. Oldie but goldie.
Score: 5/10
Tried this? Share your thoughts in the comments below. AF
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