Talisker 8yo 2024 Special Release
Spirited Xchange Tidal Churn | 58.7% ABV
Score: 5/10
Average.
TL;DR
Not much wrong with it, not enough right with it
Repeat Offender
Answer honestly; have you fallen in love with whisky? I mean, are you actually in love with it?
I know, it’s a big question. It’s likely that you’ve fallen in love with some whisky, some of the time, right? But I put it to you that, if you’re reading the pages of Dramface, you’re probably at least really interested in whisky.
You know it, and you enjoy getting to know it more. You look forward to spending time with it and you’re perhaps susceptible to the occasional daydream along a whisky theme. Would you say? If you generally agree, I’d say you’re in love with whisky. At the very least, you fancy it a bit.
Anyway, it’s a dangerous partner, for sure. Ethanol is poison, after all. Also, with each and every new date you’re spending a little more money than you did last time too. Still, you’re on the hook. You’re a sucker for that sweet, viscous amber nectar and the promise of that next ‘date’.
For me, it’s been a while now and, depending on where we start the clock on my whisky relationship, it could go back as far as three decades. But actually falling in love, that was a little more recent, less than twenty years ago. A pretty casual affair at first, a toe in the water here and there, you know, trying things on to see how they ‘fit’.
Then, 2009 brought a bottle of Lagavulin and the wheels fell off the exploration wagon. I was in: hook, line and sinker. I was ready to settle down with it, sign on the dotted line. I’d found my comfort, and the company for the road ahead was very alluring.
If I could go back and have a word with myself, apart from suggesting I stock up on all those ‘expensive’ bottles obvs, I’d probably suggest nothing different. Not a thing. I’m really quite happy how whisky has turned out for me and you know what - I’ll say it - I’ve been a pretty decent reciprocal partner. Forgive the conceit, but I have converted anyone and everyone who’d give me a fair few minutes of their time. In most cases, they’re pretty happy about that too. So I think, to date, things have worked out pretty well for us both.
If, however, I were to step back beyond that fifteen year timespan, things weren’t quite so good, not to begin with. There were some clumsy first dates. I had that moment where I drank whisky as if it was wine and it taught me a painful lesson that I could smell and taste for years afterwards. There was also the time, so disgusted with the smell of a bottle of blended scotch (I forget which one but it matters not - everything had that generic ‘whisky smell’ and flavour back then) that I joined some pals in mixing it with Kia-Ora orange cordial and crushed apples. What can I say? We were poor and that’s all we had at hand.
Then there was my first Scottish distillery date: Talisker.
Some friends from New York were over for a couple of weeks in 2001 and we toured the Highlands together. Upon arriving in Skye we ducked into the distillery and took an ad-hoc tour to hide from pretty terrible weather. I may be wrong here, but I think it was free.
I found it all pretty interesting, and I remember feeling “I could get to like this!” At the end of the tour we were each poured a small glass of the ten year old. I finished my glass, and licked my lips. It wasn’t unpleasant, but if I’m honest, I didn’t love it. I walked away believing whisky wasn’t my ‘type’.
My pal from New York bought a bottle and took it home as a souvenir. We probably didn’t realise back then how ubiquitous Talisker was, but I heard months later he was relaying everything he’d learned from the tour with his family and friends back home, so it’s possible he’s still out there, evangelising. I’d love to know, but we never kept in touch. Divorce and all that messy stuff. It happens. Hey Tom, how’s the journey?
Anyway, I’m sure that if he were to see me now - and the shelves of the Wally pit sagging as they are - he’d be pretty surprised. I suppose it was all a question of timing. It would take another few years for me to have my moment with whisky where I decided a second date would be a must. The times we’ve had since has been nothing short of amazing and, health and means permitting, I look forward to the promise of the future as much as I take pleasure from the past.
You know what though? Probably the last distillery for me to fall in love with - of the available malts at least - was, ironically, Talisker.
I don’t think it was the peat smoke, it was always milder than others in that sense. I don’t think it was the salt and pepper character, or the famous ‘catch’ in the finish that Charlie MacLean always mentions. And it certainly wasn’t its slightly higher-than-typical 45.8% ABV, I was already way beyond any potential alcohol strength barrier. I think I just never really connected with it, it was always a bottle that was easy to walk past. In the early days, there were just so many others to explore.
Yet so, so many people I encountered in my whisky travels loved their Talisker. I mean; they emphatically adored it. They placed it high and above everything else. Once more, I just never understood.
Yet, whisky teaches me to never make my mind up on the first meeting, to never say ‘I don’t like…’, and to always take an appropriate opportunity to revisit.
And so, in time, I came to understand Talisker and make space for it. Always great value, the 10 year old became something of a permashelf bottle. Then, in 2018 they released an 8 year old as part of the Diageo Special Releases and… boof! I was besotted.
Suddenly, I was belting out the Skye Boat Song, finding hyperbolic words and lavishing heavy praise while giddily pouring my new found love for pals. It was a thing of pure beauty. It was unique and something I needed in my whisky life.
In for the long haul, I bought back ups.
Review
Talisker 8yo Tidal Churn, 2024 Spirited Xchange Special Releases, stone-spun casks, 58.7% ABV
£110 RRP but already heavily discounted. £87 paid.
Talisker hadn’t really featured for a while in the Special Releases before that 2018 bottling, but it has featured every year since, often as an 8 year old.
There is a historical homage here, in the 1970s and 1980s there existed an official “John Walker & Sons” bottling as an 8 year old, which I’ve had the good fortune to try. It was pretty lovely, if a little tainted by being cooped up in a screw-top bottle for far too long. Amazingly though, that dry, peppery ‘catch’ was still there.
The 2018 8 year old was a first-fill “deep charred” bourbon barrel release (we assume full maturation). The year after they released a decent 15 year old from American oak hogsheads. 2020 saw a return to an eight year age statement but with a disappointing rum cask treatment, with surprisingly little cask influence. There was a nice salty-sweetness but eight years, it seems, isn't enough time to take the raw edge off this Highlander in well-used casks, but if you prefer your Tally spirit-forward, with the rum element pretty mild, this could be your pick. I still have some, which tells a tale, I guess.
2021 pushed the spirit character further, using peated refill casks. I finished off that one, but I didn’t buy a second bottle. I kinda loved my time with 2022’s 11 year old ex-bourbon but didn’t so much love my time with last year’s NAS port finished weirdo; the first one I chose not to buy.
This year, they’ve returned to the 8 year age statement and - as you might have registered by now - I’m a repeat offender when it comes to Talisker. A sucker. I bought it almost immediately. I’m weak.
This is despite everything that Diageo does to us with the odd and contrived cask play and truly random, unintelligible prices.
And yet, I might not shout about it, but since 2018 I’ve been sneaking out the back window to slink off and court dalliances with whatever they bring along in the hope my eyes can be popped wide open, once more, like they were back in 2018.
I’m sorry to say, that ain’t quite happened yet. Let’s see what 2024’s Tidal Churn has going on.
Score: 5/10
Average.
TL;DR
Not much wrong with it, not enough right with it
Nose
Cooking apples, freshly peeled, warm bread, cider vinegar, rock pools, soot, pebbles and crisp white wine. With water a sweet vanilla appears, like Snowball fondant or Fluff.
Palate
Ambivalence. Vanilla syrup, sticky toffee sauce and baked apples; salty baked apples. Eucalyptus, white pepper and yes, that ‘catch’, it’s light, but it’s there.
Might I pick this out blind as a Talisker? Maybe…
With water a wee fruity-sweet, almost tropical note appears, a bit pineapple-y. It’s nicer with a drop of water for sure. But it takes real effort to get excited.
The Dregs
Before I get to the thoughts on this latest entrant to the line up; why Tidal Churn? Well, apparently they fill the barrels with wet stones and rotate them to ‘polish’ away the char layer, before re-toasting.
Look, honestly, I don’t know either.
I’ve mentioned the contrived cask play already, but with the Talisker Special Releases, in recent years, it’s a theme they seem hell-bent on. They need stories to tell, differences to point out and new things to sell; to new suitors and sunken suckers alike.
It’s nothing to do with quality or flavour or improvement and everything to do with ‘different’, just for the sake of it. This second rendition of their Spirited Xchange theme, and all the nonsense surrounding it, just smacks of every boardroom brainstorm meeting you’ve ever been afraid of and little to do with good, honest, flavourful whisky.
It seems, for Diageo - and others - this is just the way it needs to be. They need hooks and tales and things that are new, I get it. I’ve been around this bottle for a couple of weeks now and, on occasion, it has surprised me. But each time I pour something else alongside it, it just falls over. It’s pretty bang average, middle of the road, nothing particularly wrong but absolutely - and ironically - nothing new or unique with no particular hook apparent. It’s actually a wee bit boring.
We know Talisker is an icon and we know it produces a wonderful malt, but this expression is yet another example of the plain and ordinary, dressed up to look like something a little more special than it’s capable of being with this treatment, at this age. What’s worse? It’s £110.
Now, comically, retailers have cottoned on and immediately thrown out Diageo’s suggested RRP and ‘discounted’ it straight out of the traps. I bought this from Royal Mile Whiskies for less than £90 and I’ve seen it for £80. Closer to where it actually should be, then. But it still has problems.
In the days ahead, we’re expecting reviews to drop for Glasgow’s latest 1770 Small Batch releases and among them you’ll find a peated Islay Cask Finish at 57.3%. I paid £59 for the pleasure of having it. I bought another. I hope to contribute to the review because this wee bottle is a cracking example of today’s flavour-packed smorgasbord of choice that Diageo seem to be either willfully ignoring or blissfully ignorant of.
Yes, I know I’m comparing a large outturn Special Release apple to a tiny outturn single cask orange, but it just happens to be what was at hand. I could’ve picked an Ardnahoe, a Torabhaig, an Ardnamurchan, a Signatory 100º Ardmore, countless indies…. the choice is everywhere - and those examples are just the first that come to mind in this exact style. There’s talent and inspiration out there, barrel-loads of it, and it comes at a price of entry far less expensive than the nonsensical out-of-a-hat prices that modern Diageo seem fond of.
Producers who continue to develop their products lazily, lacking awareness or care, will be caught up with and caught out. How many discount stickers on their Special Releases does it take for someone to realise, with this series, it’s already happened?
The heavy discount from the off might have made me pull the trigger once more this year. I was blinded by nostalgia, optimism and a soft spot for a truly great distillery.
I might love it, but next year I think I’ll leave it.
Score: 5/10
Tried this? Share your thoughts in the comments below. WMc
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