Caol Ila 14 Year Old 2005 Gordon & Macphail Connoisseurs Choice

The Connoisseurs Choice from Gordon & Macphail has some new livery since a couple of months. Today I will try a 14 years old bottled at 45%, finished on Hermitage Wood for a year. Hermitage is a wine from the Northern Rhone region.

Oh, this is something else! The typical maritime character from Coal Ila is nicely wrapped in very sweet and fresh notes of red fruit. That must be the wine cask. Strawberries, raspberries and red berries with a hint of juicy plums and even some creamy banana. The salt and peat are pushed all the way in the back, though, but that’s quite alright. This is simply very good. After some fifteen minutes, it becomes quite candy-like. Dracula’s teeth, if you are familiar with that candy?

The malt is nicely oily and very quaffable. After the initial sweet bomb, mostly strawberry now – the saltiness finally emerges. Some pepper and peat kick in. I’m not sure I would have guessed this is Caol Ila if tasted blind, but I certainly know – blind or not – that I like it very much. Very successful wine finish, if you ask me.

It goes up and down like a yoyo in the finish: sweet tot salt to sweet to salt and so on.

Very atypical, but very good. Oh, well, is there any other Caol Ila?

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