Tourism Destination of the Year 2022 | 52% ABV

A step backwards?

Once you cross the invisible line that curves in a big sweeping hook from Dumbarton through Perth, up to Banchory and back west again to Nairn, you are officially in the Scottish Highlands.

Despite this invisible line there’s no doubting you’ve transitioned into another place, for the change in scenery is as dramatic as the marketing department at Glengoyne… a distillery which also happens to straddle a different invisible line between the Highland and Lowland regions.

The Crystals routinely voyage up through the Highland line from a Perthshire trajectory, and the transition into the Highlands is the best part of the journey because we suddenly feel we’re detached from the burdens of daily life. The towering mountain sides carpeted with pine trees, the road weaving a gently sweeping path through it all and the kaleidoscope of colours on show all year round can make even the most stubborn of stresses melt at its majesty.

The further north you travel the more intense this experience becomes, for the mountains continue to grow in height and severity, some with snow resting in shaded pockets well into the month of May. The lochs that fill depressions in the heathery landscapes reflect the cloudy skies above; cameras are understandably the most prevalent feature in these parts, that and tour buses. The impact of snaking up around Loch Tulla viewpoint and over the Rannoch Moors to reveal the sheer faced rocky magnificence of the Buachaille Etive Mòr, for those witnessing it for the first time, is a life defining moment: this is the Scotland of which we’d dreamed.

Sam Mendes knows it too, for he brought his production team up here to film the scene in Skyfall when Dame Judi Dench and Daniel Craig look out over the valleys of Glen Etive and mutter “a storm’s coming.” Well you’re in the Highlands of Scotland so, thank you for that Captain Obvious.

Incidentally that road, marked now on Google Maps as “James Bond Skyfall Road” for easy tourism, has become a bit of a mess - the footfall on the way to Skyfall has increased to such an extent that it’s eroded the embankments and suffered from littering from lazy tourists, so much so that signs have been erected warning people off. Everyone wants to be 007 though so can almost be forgiven, unlike buying Macallan.

Carry on through the wilds of Fort William, Invergarry and out west to Kyle of Lochalsh, and you are firmly in the land of the gods. Further west lies the Isle of Skye and the jagged, death defying Munro range of the Black Cuillins. This is a place that sings like a heavenly choir on a good day, and reports like an echoing battle horn over the most desolate unforgiving landscape on a bad day. Watching a sunset fall over the gorse in this neuk of Scotland can move you to tears; brains struggle to translate the beauty captured through wibbling eyeballs with any success, so inevitably gives up the ghost and releases raw emotion instead. It’s utterly, confoundingly stunning. To the north of the Isle of Skye sits Talisker distillery, to the south Torabhaig. In the middle sits a ferry port that will transport you, if you so wish, to the island off the eastern shoreline: the Isle of Raasay and therein the only distillery built on this dry land since the dawn of time.

I’ve never been to the Isle of Raasay yet have spent a lot of time on the neighbouring Skye. I can imagine what views towards Skye you’d have standing on the smaller Isle of Raasay, especially as it faces west towards the setting sun, and so it’s of no surprise that the Isle of Raasay Distillery won the Tourism Destination of the Year Award in the 2022 Scottish Whisky Awards. If you depart the island with disappointment, then it’s almost certainly not the views that have come up short.

Review

100% Manzanilla Casks - 2500 outturn, 52% ABV
£95 - at Distillery or via Slàinte Club ballot - provided to Dramface for free

To celebrate this win and their inimitable location, the Isle of Raasay distillery released a special edition whisky called the “Tourism Destination of the Year 2022 Edition Distillery Exclusive”. Comprising a batch of 2,500 bottles, this exclusive is only available at the distillery itself or through the Slàinte Club ballot. This bottle here that I’m reviewing, bottle 0732 / 2500, was sent to the Dramface team for free by the Isle of Raasay distillery, with a view to having it reviewed by someone. At first I thought it a nice gesture, of wanting to give it to a place that will assess it with proper thought and insight. However it appears to have formed part of a broader push of PR, given the various bottles appearing on “influencer” feeds with lacklustre, paint-by-numbers phrasing.

I mention this only because we, as independent reviewers, don’t typically accept bottles of whisky from any place free-gratis because, by that very exchange there is an inherent unspoken agreement that whoever decides to write about this whisky will be kind about it, even if it’s a total stinker. For the person chairing the transaction there’s a connection there that would suffer should negative things be written. For the person reviewing the bottle there’s an extension of that sentiment; the writer wouldn’t want to put the team-mate in an embarrassing position. “We gave you that bottle and you guys ripped it a new one. Well, stuff the lot of ye,” might come the howl. Guilty by association.

So what to do? Well if ever a bottle is offered to one of us, we deflect it onto another writer, if they fancy it. I was asked if I’d like to review a new release of Raasay, given that I’d tried their R-01.1 release and found it interesting. Do I say no, because I’d rather travel to Raasay and buy this distillery-only bottle myself, thus removing any bias from this chain of goodwill/expectation entirely? It’s 5.5 hours from my house to the Isle of Raasay, including the ferry - 11 hour round trip. Not exactly ticking the box of sustainability or reason, and Raasay isn’t yet high enough in my radar to warrant such a journey.

Knowing that Dramface is what it is - fiercely independent and brutally honest - I decided to say yes with the explicit understanding (that we all signed up for when we joined the team) that, should I find it not up to snuff, I’d say as much. We are unique in our palates, perspectives and preferences - just because it might not resonate with me, doesn’t mean it won’t resonate with someone else, so I’ll certainly give it the time and energy required to lay it out for everyone. That much is demanded of me, at the very least.

Nose

Big sharp espresso right off the bat. Big and vibrant. Sweet intimation of redness - subtle sherry. Young in smell - new-make vibes with farm-like, sweet/sour creamy thickness. Rain battered stone damp bothy. Hairspray. Tropical fruits. A whisp of smoke, rye toast. Raita. Mint. Chilli powder. The more it sits the more the smoke arrives. Earthy, sweet peat.

Palate

Bold new-make initially - farmy, earthy, thick soup, oily, sour cream, boiled sweets, menthol, sticky jam, chilli flakes. With time the vibrancy remains, with more of that red sweet fruitiness appearing. The peat comes through gently, more so on the finish initially, more strongly on the palate with time. Clearly showing its 3.5 years.

The Dregs

So the stats of this bottle are as thus. 52% ABV, uncoloured and non-chill filtered. The barley used was 48-52ppm with a residual 8ppm in bottle, which is an interesting bit of extra information given that I’d assumed that if barley was peated to 48ppm, that’s what would be present in the bottle too - learning time for auld Doog. This release of 2,500 bottles has been achieved through the disgorging of 250 litre hogshead casks of first fill spanish ex-Manzanilla sherry oak - a total of 10 casks used one would assume, but a cask fill ABV of 63.5% versus the bottle ABV might point to less casks and dilution of spirit. Given that this is 3.5 year old whisky, unless Raasay uses some exceptionally leaky casks - distilled October/November 2019 and bottled May 2023 - dilution must surely be the case. So not “cask strength”, but rather “high strength”.

I know all this because the Isle of Raasay website lays it all out for me: transparency kids, this is what it looks like. Imagine if we had this level of information for Macallan or GlenDronach, how different we might appraise it. I look at these Raasay stats and I think that it’s brilliant to see this amount of information available to us punters - more of this please.

The only other Manzanilla casked whisky I’ve experienced was the Ben Nevis 10yo from the Cadenhead’s Warehouse Tasting set, and it took me an age to get to grips with it, the last few drams being the best of the entire bottle. The Manzanilla affected the whisky, which was quite hot anyway, with an edge of tart red fruits. Eventually the heat tamed down enough that, in the last few draws, was a beautifully rich and bright punchy fruit bowl. The Manzanilla casks for this Raasay release seem a lot more shy.

That said, it’s interesting - I like the new-make flavour in general and the addition of the subtle sherried notes lends an extra depth and dynamic, but that was also present in the multiple cask type, two-tone peated/unpeated core range R-1.01. This presents like a purer strain of Raasay and I definitely think it resolves as such in glass. There’s a singularity of experience here that is hard to shake off; a laser beam of focused flavour.

I was interested to know if having a dedicated, one cask-style Raasay would fill the hole missing in the R-1.01, given that it was six different types of casks (using 2 styles of malted barley); I found the addition of a sherry bomb to the glass made it a more powerful and engaging experience. With this release, matured exclusively in Manzanilla sherry for the entirety, I expected it to be overtly red and fruity. Instead the new-make character - farmy, creamy, bright, slightly sour vinegar - steals the show with only a thin red line around the perimeter. Raasay’s new-make character does have a vibrant coastal element and, loving Ardnamurchan as much as I do, hits me squarely in the feels. It’s nice to sip away at and bask in the quality of young whisky coming out of places like Raasay. Do I love it? Does it make me reach for that beautiful bottle to discover more? With regret it doesn’t.

It’s good to compare young distilleries given how closely we are allowed to follow them, and the resonance with Glenbeg serves as a handy comparison. I have tried at length 2.5yo Ardnamurchan as well as 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7 years of maturation from released whisky, and I’ve sampled 8.5yo whisky at the distillery. Each year a clearly defined distillery character runs through each expression and forms part of an overall more balanced spectrum that elevates the older it gets; never does it feel like the new-make character in younger Ardnamurchan takes over.

The Raasay exclusive, on the other hand, presents as much more visceral and raw, the cask seeming to have played very little part in swaying the balance - I say this never having tried new-make from Raasay and thus perhaps unfairly assume the casks didn’t help, but I’ve tried enough whisky now to feel like I know when a cask has dominated the spirit. I don’t feel the Manzanilla casks have dominated anything here - do Manzanilla casks take longer to impart or influence the whisky? I’d be really interested to know.

This is good whisky. It’s got engaging flavours and is presented with integrity, transparency and confidence. More developed palates might find more inside this whisky but, having only been at this for just over two years now, I can’t find much more than I’ve noted above. I do know that £95 is a big ask for anyone not focused on Raasay or with inherent interest as being part of the place from the start. £95 is special purchase whisky territory for me, and must be a whisky that leaves regret at the door. If I had bought this at £95, I’d feel a bit of remorse that I didn’t use those substantial funds on something more special.

Reading my notes on the £50 core range R-1.01 for sanity check, to make sure that I’m not doing this bottle a disservice, I can’t help but feel like this Manzanilla release is almost a step backwards for almost double the cost. All that is present in the Manzanilla is present in the core release, but all that is in the core release is not present in the Manzanilla, obviously, which ratifies what I’m thinking - the smorgasbord of casks used in the core range does very well to keep the raw new-make character from taking over. Without that palette of casks, and at a higher ABV, it’s a one-sided battle. Raasay will unquestionably mature into greatness - starting with a foundation this good means it’s written in the cards.

My thanks to Dramface and Isle of Raasay for providing this bottle for me to consider, with a duty of care and effort afforded that’s commensurate with how important whisky is to us all - I know how lucky I am to have this handed to me and at no point did I forget why I’m here - to provide perspective for those who read with an open mind, heart and wallet.

Score: 5/10

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

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