Elements of Islay Peat & Sherry 10yo
Belgium Exclusive Blended Malt | 57.4% ABV
Whisky Fatigue Conquered
When life hands you lemons, make lemonade is an often-used cliché urging us to make the most out of a bad situation, and we’ll occasionally say it around Dramface too.
While I won’t go as far as to state that life has been bad for me (those in violent conflicts, floods, earthquakes or famine have it bad; dealing with stuff not even remotely comparable to what some privileged middle aged man in Western Europe has to deal with), recently it has in all relativity been somewhat challenging.
Family, kids growing up and doing what kids do, all the usual stuff many of us deal with. Work however, has been a downright pile of steaming hot horse manure for the past eighteen or so months and it looks like it’ll get messier, smellier and worse overall in the foreseeable future before any possibility that things start to become remotely better again.
Obviously I’m not here to bore you by moaning and complaining about my personal issues and I‘m pretty sure that’s not why you’re here either. But the plus side of all of this is that I gravitated more - even more than was already the case - towards whisky.
Now, I should be careful; not in the way of actual consumption, but in every other way possible. I’ve been reading more about it, and then rereading some more. I’ve been soaking up what my fellow Dramfacers contribute and have probably watched more whiskytube in the past two months than in most of 2024. Chasing interesting books and other sources on whisky has proven to be almost as equally exciting as chasing that ‘must have’ bottle.
I’ve been setting aside samples for friends, arranging meet-ups, planning festival visits, hanging out at my ‘go to’ store just to chat whisky and I absolutely love each and every bit of it.
Diving even deeper into the rabbit hole of whisky, head first at that, has proven to be exactly the antidote I needed for all the inconveniences and setbacks of recent everyday life.
As much as I was suffering from whisky fatigue, not even a year ago, I am now fully embracing every aspect of it. Because that’s the beauty of the thing; overindulging - when applied to all there is to whisky apart from the actual drinking - is fairly harmless. Submerging myself in all the additional things that whisky geekery brings has proven to be the proverbial warm blanket of comfort and healthy distraction I desperately needed.
Whereas a year or so ago I was dreading the idea of losing the ability to get excited about whisky, I am now soaking it all up and then some. When life gives you BS, dive into whisky geekery.
Review
Elements of Islay 10yo, Peat & Sherry Edition, blended Malt Whisky, (Belgium Exclusive), 900 bottles (50cl), 57.4% ABV
£52 paid & still some availability
The ‘Elements of Islay’ series is, I reckon, a neat brand. Part of the Elixir Distillers portfolio, owned by Sukhinder and Rajbir Singh who were both previously of The Whisky Exchange fame. They are now owners of Tormore distillery and - still under construction - Portintruan distillery. This newest Islay project was expected to become operational somewhere last year, but various road bumps occurred along the way: from official complaints and objections being filed, deterring the needed planning permissions and construction approvals, all the way to the appointed construction company going bankrupt as recently as August. It seems it may well still take a while before we see anything happening.
Meantime, Elements of Islay independently bottle stuff from, you guessed it, various Islay distilleries. The single malts in this series have this cool little nod to the periodic table, abbreviating the names of the distillery much like the different elements of the periodic table (Lp being Laphroaig, Lg abbreviates Lagavulin, Ar stands for Ardbeg and so on). While these releases can be quite expensive (like pretty much anything Islay these days), there’s also the fact that they tend to be presented as half litre bottles. Recently we’ve seen a few in 70 cl form, but by and large 50 cl is the way they chose to go.
Snubbing these because of that would be understandable, but would also mean you might be missing out on some cracking good whisky. Once, around 2018, I took a punt on what seemed back then to be a quite pricey half litre bottling of Lagavulin. It absolutely knocked me on my backside and I was convinced that, even with 20cl less than usual, the inside of my cabinet would be seeing more from this brand.
This particular bottle dates back to late 2020 already, but I only picked it up late last year from a local store and I had been eyeing it up for quite a while before pulling the trigger. It set me back just a little over £50. If we do the math, that’s £70-ish for a regular size bottle of 10 year old cask strength Islay malt. Not what I’d call a rip-off by any means in today’s market.
Nose
Cherries, berries, dark chocolate and toffee. All giving their all to hold off the peat. To no avail. It takes a minute or two, but then waves and waves of earthy peat and mild, ‘cold’ and sweet smoke crawl right out of the glass. Behind that lie notes of rich spices of clove and nutmeg. All the while those red fruits remain, standing their ground.
There’s quite a lot going on and yet it never becomes overpowering. Perhaps what strikes me the most is the impressive delivery and balance.
Palate
Ashy. As in “they likely haven’t been shy with the Caol Ila in this one” ashy. Smoky and sweet red fruits; rich and full. Oaky, dried wood notes leaning into wood char. The smoke and peat now claim their place in the footlights while all of the other notes I found on the nose sort of blend in behind them, harmonising things.
Despite the respectable ABV it’s actually quite quaffable neat, but if you feel like adding a few drops of water it accentuates everything even further. But while adding some water makes things even more pronounced, I found it ever so slightly disrupted the balance as well.
The Dregs
Absolutely lovely stuff; a near perfect winter dram, in fact. Is it a 7/10 or an 8/10? It’s probably somewhere in between, and on any other day I may well be inclined to bump it up to an 8/10. It’s quite relative and subjective after all and the beauty always lies in the eye of the beholder.
But if you’re even remotely attracted to the concept of combining peat and sherry, please consider this a polite cough to draw your attention to what these have to offer. Yes, this is a Belgium exclusive, with an outturn of just 900 bottles, but they do similar ‘exclusive’ releases to many different markets, so chances are there will be something very akin to this available near you too.
The fact that I managed to pick one up even several years after it was released suggests these don’t exactly fly off the shelves. Again, I put that down to the 50 cl presentation and based on this release and my previous experiences with the brand, I will now go on record saying you are indeed missing out if you completely ignore this. It has absolutely helped me rediscover my love of all things whisky this winter.
Because, while some of their single malt releases can be eye-wateringly expensive, when you do the math these blended malts are a very decent buck, delivering a truckload of bang.
Score: 7/10
Tried this? Share your thoughts in the comments below. EA