Legacy Series Chapter 3 | 46% ABV

Score: 6/10

**Good stuff.**
***TL;DR***
*Not my favourite Torabhaig to date, yet the one I’d recommend*

How am I supposed to pronounce this?

Until malt whisky became something of a pursuit, I had no knowledge of the Gaelic language whatsoever. Apart from a toast and a few swear words, obvs.

I still have no knowledge of it but, thanks to whisky, I’m at least starting to learn how to pronounce some things. What was, at first, an awkward and bothersome barrier, is now something curious and fun. The more I look into the pronunciation, the more I stumble across translations and meanings, the more I discover about Scotland and its roots, and the more I become intrigued.

You’ll be aware Scotland is a pretty small country, with a population of around 5.5 million folk. That scales us alongside Norway or Finland, which actually might not help you visualise much. How about Lebanon or Liberia?

Perhaps it would be best to say that England, our nearest neighbour, is about ten times bigger by population. That said, I think Scotland does a decent job of making its presence felt on the world stage and has a strong, definable identity, despite its diminutive dimensions and modest populace. Depending on where you are located your idea of this country might vary, but however you visualise ‘Scottishness’, I’ll bet Gaelic, its native language for over a millennia, doesn’t really feature much.

It makes sense that it wouldn’t. Scotland today is anglicised and, according to latest figures, only about 1% of our population are native Gaelic speakers. That’s really not many at all to keep a language alive. Around a hundred years ago, it would’ve been closer to 5% and pre-industrial era Scotland had a quarter of its population speaking native Gaelic. To many, it would seem it’s all but extinct today.

The decline has many reasons including culture, aspiration, war, media, religion and politics. A wee bit of Googling will have you better placed to figure out why we only have a few thousand Gaelic speakers left, and much of it is fascinating indeed. It’s also pretty complex and throughout history laced with alternative agendas, as these things tend to be. But there are real signs of positive change afoot, there are real meaningful changes where what once was seen as a hindrance, is now being celebrated as heritage. And I’m about to become part of it.

No, I’m not signing up for a language class, although I might yet. But I will place some effort into understanding how to unlock the phonetic codes and better say the things I see written in Gaelic. What at first seems like very confusing and unpronounceable ways to contort the latin alphabet, it turns out, are guides in how to pronounce very specific and subtle sounds. Furthermore, what began as a way to learn how to pronounce whisky names has led me down such a rabbit hole that I’ve incidentally learned a little more about my own country and the reasons for the shape it finds itself in today.

We’re seeing other, literal, signs of Gaelic preservation appearing too. Our road directions, railway stations, place names and civil infrastructure are increasingly being updated to bilingual nomenclature and signage, a move that seems to be, to some, oddly annoying or often conflated with political ideology; isn't everything these days?

However, the rise in Gaelic-themed whisky products seem refreshingly free of political taint. Even if some of us get a little uncomfortable when we don’t quite know how to confidently ask for them.

One of my early stumbles over a Gaelic name on a bottle of whisky was a few years back in a local supermarket. They had bottles of blended whisky on sale for a ridiculously low price and I was curious enough to grab a bottle of Tè Bheag from the shelf. What followed at the checkout seemed worthy of a comedy sketch.

Due to the bottle not scanning, the operator asked “Oh - how do you say this?” Being similarly bereft of any clue how to unlock the seven-lettered brand, I had no choice but to reply that I really didn’t know.

With a shrug she held the bottle high and shouted “Claire, can you geez a shelf price for this bottle of… Tea Bag?”

As I uncorked the £12 bottle at home, not only did I discover how to actually pronounce it - it tells us on the bottle - I also uncovered a pretty decent little bottle of blended whisky, as well as a bunch of other incredible stuff.

This was a 40% blend, but it says “unchillfiltered” on the front label, with guidance on the back label as to why you might encounter haziness in a blend with a “high proportion” of malt. I liked this; unchillfiltered whiskies under 46% do exist! I wanted to understand more. This informative label went on to share that it was a release designed to appeal to Gaelic-speaking islanders and presented in a “traditional” way, hence the lack of filtration. This was at the behest of the curious man behind the brand, who we’ll get to shortly.

I enjoyed the whisky experience enough that I went back and picked up a second bottle at the same supermarket, which is what’s pictured here. It still didn’t scan, but it was still £12 and this time, I knew how to say it.

That was ten years ago. It’s still available today, although the bottle and branding has seen a few changes, not for the better, and I can guarantee you’ll pay more than £12 for it. Still, it would seem it enjoys something of a cult following and is very much enjoyed by those who discover it.

Made by the Gaelic Whisky Co. Pràban na Linne, it’s been around for decades and currently sits alongside another blend called Mac Na Mara (Son of the Sea), as well as a blended malt called Poit Dhubh (Illicit Still). The company was founded in 1973 and it’s interesting to read this Whisky Magazine interview with the founder, the late Iain Noble who, as it turns out, is an impressive individual. He’s the sort that might lead those of us who live a more sedentary existence to question what we’re doing with our lives. Probably that’s just me.

A financial entrepreneur, he invested his merchant bank-derived fortune into Skye during the 1970s. While ensconced in island life, he became immediately influential in the preservation of Scots Gaelic despite not, at first, being a speaker himself. His activism saw him found the impressive and celebrated Gaelic college: Sabhal Mòr Ostaig on Skye. He’s also enough of an activist to be directly responsible for the first of those bilingual road signs we spoke of earlier, believing that the decay of native languages go hand-in-hand with the decay of local economies and ecosystems.

In the late nineties, he received recognition in the honours list for his services to the Gaelic language, and became Sir Iain Noble.

With further reading, you’ll discover he’s also the person responsible for gaining planning permission for a second distillery on Skye: Toravaig [sic]. With planning granted as far back as 2002, the distillery build was significantly delayed and Sir Iain passed in 2010 before realising the start of construction. The current owners, Mossburn Distillers, took over the project and finally founded the distillery in 2016, with the first spirit flowing in 2017. It’s been an exciting prospect to follow and I’ve done so the only way I know how; bottle by bottle.

Mossburn stayed true to the ideology of the project’s founder and named the distillery and single malt brand Torabhaig, preserving the Gaelic spelling of the original farm steading, complete with impressive restoration of farm buildings fortified with stone once-upon-a-time retrieved from the nearby ruins of Caisteal Chamuis; a name you may recognise from another Mossburn brand.

When the inaugural Torabhaig release appeared in 2020; The Legacy 2017, everyone was impressed by the transparency and presentation, despite the bottling being something of a ‘marmite’ release.

If you like your whisky green, peaty, and bold, you probably loved it. If you preferred a little more age, depth and refinement, you’d probably have been better waiting. Made from a vatting of a hundred ex-bourbon first-fill barrels, the once-more informative label shared with us lesser-seen gems such as malt-specific, pre-process phenol ppm levels, as well as in-bottle residual phenol ppm, yeast type and a commitment to no chill-filtration and no added colouring practices. I liked it. It was good whisky, but obviously and understandably youthful.

A year or so later Gaelic names began to appear with the core range Allt Gleann - named after a water source - and it was a little more refined. Still at 46% ABV and true to the transparency of the inaugural, it was made a little cheaper and ”from batches of no more than 30 barrels” each time. Drummond seemed to enjoy it last year and I was giddy enough to score it higher than he did on our buddy-up review.

Then recently we enjoyed the launch of a higher ABV Allt Gleann Batch Strength at 61.1% ABV and it found surprising favour indeed. I prefer the slightly mellower Allt Gleann over the spicy inaugural, but I favour the Batch Strength over both, so I guess that suggests it’s a 7/10 too.

What we have today is the next ‘step’ in their Legacy Series; Chapter 3: Cnoc Na Moine. I was very happy to use my ridiculously limited Gaelic vocabulary (clearly gleaned from AnCnoc and Bunnahabhain releases) to deduce this was the ‘Hill of Peat’. Since all of the releases to date are peaty indeed, in fact I’d say perhaps the peatiest new distillery core-range whiskies around at the moment, what actually makes this different is the use of sherry casks for the first time.

Torabhaig have become known for steady and consistent releases, which to me is preferable over flooding the market with difficult-to-follow release after release. If we include the Batch Strength, this is the fourth wide-scale release in as many years. Kudos for taking it easy.

However, and I know this is probably just me, the brand could use a little more personality; there’s not much of a ‘face’ to the whisky yet. The website lists nine ‘distillers’ and how long they’ve been there, but if that’s true they're not likely customer-facing and it would be preferable for me to get to know the vibe and longer term outlook of everything through knowledgeable faces willing to connect. I’ve yet to feel this. It may yet happen. Once more it’s probably on me and my lack of effort.

Likewise, when I took a wee pilgrimage to visit, they had nothing on offer to sell me that wasn’t available online, nothing to deepen the connection after the effort of reaching such a remote location. This was in early 2023 however, and I’m since reliably informed they have corrected this. They did have a reasonable selection of independent bottlings under the Mossburn label on their shelves, so I picked up a Ben Nevis 9yo which was decent, but I’d rather have tried a different take on their own spirit.

However, I have to concede that this wide-release sherry and peat proposition in front of me is different, and it’s probably the most appealing Torabhaig yet. But I need to clarify why.

Review

Torabhaig Cnoc Na Moine, The Legacy Series Chapter 3, ex-bourbon, oloroso, Pedro Ximènez casks, 46% ABV
£55-60 and wide availability in most markets

The elephant in the room here is that all of the prices are, currently, a little salty. This and the Allt Gleann 46% releases are £55-60 and the Batch Strength is around £75. Not ridiculous, but they’re competing with much more accomplished malts at that level and they’d do well to price a little sharper on future releases. It would make everything easier to recommend. If they need a guide, look no further than Ardnamurchan. As usual. It’s at least 10-15% cheaper and the malt is more mature too.

This one comes, according to their front label, with a maturation of American oak oloroso, Pedro Ximènez and ex-bourbon casks.

Nose

Well, there’s a barrel of smoke; earthy and warm this time around, with barbecue wood-chip vibes. Behind there’s confectionary; coconut creams, macaroons and Edinburgh rock. Sweet, fresh apple juice and lime zest keep things bright ahead of a cereal bowl of dried fruit and nut muesli. It’s also unmistakably coastal, with an abundant salty, mineralic quality.

Palate

It arrives thinner than you might imagine. Thinner than the previous Torabhaig releases and it does feel as if water has been added already (of course it has, but I mean in the glass). Still, the dry smoke and barbecue themes are there with a little fresh tobacco pouch and a gentle chilli and pepper spice. Then drying-to-the-palate fruits; cranberries and grapefruit, with some sour apple.

It’s quite a dry whisky overall and the use of sherry casks has been carefully measured. This is not a sherry bomb. It remains a true peat monster though. Despite a dry finish it hangs around for a long time, even with a splash of water, leaving a smoky, menthol aftertaste with a seashell-like brine.

The Dregs

We often have a discussion about scoring around Dramface HQ. All the writers have their own take on scoring as a concept, and you as a readership do too. We score on this site because it’s expected and it forces us to commit to something; and then quantify it, justify it, explain it. In giving it context we give it life. It’s never the final word and those that take it as such, or barely reach beyond the score, are at risk of being unintentionally misled.

As an example, I scored the last Torabhaig I reviewed higher than this, yet I’m telling you this is likely the one to go for. How so?

The Allt Glean, specifically the too-hot-for-many Batch Strength, is my pick. Brutally true to the spirit they make and a potent glimpse of what the future may bring through this work-in-progress Legacy Series. I’ll wager it’ll be good enough to take on many Islay malts too. But my pick is not always the smart pick. The flavours and balance here are much more crowd-pleasing than my laser-focused, ex-bourbon preferences. The sherry brings a richness and a flavour spread that’s just more accessible to more folk.

On arrival, the ex-bourbon releases also offer a more unctuous mouthfeel before betraying the mineralic, salty DNA and dryness on their smoky finishes. In the end, I had some fun blending a measure of each in a glass to great effect, topped off with a touch of the 61.1% Batch Strength to fortify things nicely. Honestly it worked a treat.

Going back to sip the Cnoc Na Moine, it was once more the thinnest in texture and flavour, and thus the ‘softest’ overall. Another thing to make it more accessible to more palates, perhaps.

For many of you it’ll all be academic and dependant purely on what you can get your hands on. Providing you’re not asked to overpay, I’d say none are risky and all are pure, high quality, well made malts. Moreover, they are harbingers of what lies ahead from The Misty Isle, and by having more choice than just Talisker, we’re no longer tied to Diageo’s bizarro what-shall-we-charge-today? pricing policies.

In a few close years the Legacy Series will cease and the intention - I hear - is that they’ll release a ten year old. Interesting indeed.

Interesting-er still is that the official Talisker 10 year old now bears branding declaring them “the oldest distillery on the Isle of Skye”. Nice of them to acknowledge their new neighbours. It makes me think of a tale I read about Sir Iain “nibbling at the heels’ of Diageo by suggesting they ‘sponsor’ Torabhaig as it will reduce costs and help pool resources with more distilling on the island. Mischievous shades of Hedley Wright there perhaps, betraying a kindred outlook towards his local community’s welfare.

Well, today, if you sip (affordable) Taliskers alongside Torabhaig you’ll be made aware of the youth on the pretender while simultaneously witnessing the promise of it too. It’s already close, that promise of what a traditional West Coast Islander style of whisky might be. Very close. And very encouraging.

What’s also encouraging is that, in the last decade, Scots Gaelic has shown not only stabilisation in the number of speakers, but some measurable growth. It may be small, but the reversal is rare for languages in decline. Impressive stuff, and something that no doubt owes a debt to Sir Iain Noble’s vision and effort.

I really see Stal Torabhaig as yet another incredible tribute to his own personal legacy on the island and far beyond.

I’m off to Google what Scots Gaelic is for ‘promise’.

Score: 6/10

Tried this? Share your thoughts in the comments below. WMc

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