Secret Islay 5 Year Old 2014 Nameless Three The Whisky Mercenary

Jürgen Vromans, aka the independent bottler The Whisky Mercenary, launched a couple of releases at the end of last year, where the distillery is not named. This is one of those: Nameless Three. This third one in the series is a young Islay single malt.

Lovely, dirty and quite funky nose on plasticine, wet earth, grapefruit and seaweeds. Burnt plastic, antiseptic bandages and burn ointment. Very weird, but very funny!

Good body. It is immediately very sweet with a truckload of vanilla, joined by young apples and lemon. The peat explodes on the tongue. Wonderful – and not as weird as the nose, which I think is an advantage.

Wonderfully long, peppery and ashy finish.

Young and powerful. If I were to venture a guess, I’d say it’s malt from a Kildalton distillery whose name starts with an L. You figure it out. Thanks for the sample, Jeroen DV.