Here is an independent bottling so obscure, I couldn't even find a clean picture of it anywhere on the net (!). Five Lions is a UK independent bottler whose mission to bottle exception single casks. I have not heard of them before, and the only review I could find of this bottle was pretty bare bones, so I have no idea what I'm in for. A fairly obscure bottle if there ever was one.
Craigellachie is a longstanding favorite distillery of mine. Owned by Bacardi, it's mostly shoveled into Dewar's blend - but the single malt expressions that escape are wonderful. In turns you get baskets of apple, unbaked pastry, and tons of sulfur - meaty, rich, resonant sulfur, always present, never overpowering. Here is a great article from The Whisky Wash about the distillery and its methods.
This bottle was aged 10 years in a first-fill ex-bourbon barrel and bottled at natural strength of 55.9% ABV. Let's investigate these five lions:
Nose: Sour and musty/leathery and floral: a complex nose for a ten year. I would have guessed twice that age based on nose alone! I get sour apples (almost like cider), the interior of a brand new leather jacket, salted pretzels out of the oven, a dusty dunnage warehouse, malt bins, and that quintessential sulfur note - in this case resolving as something like brisket or smoked meat.
There are also a wide variety of floral notes, especially a sweet heather scent that reminds me strongly of Highland Park. It's a little bonkers how complicated this nose is at such a comparatively young age. The only other 10 year expressions I know with this kind of depth are Springbank and Talisker, probably.
With some time in the glass, the nose tends to "revolve" around the aforementioned scents, sometimes showcasing the apples and salty bread notes, sometimes the leather and musty malt, sometimes the floral heather notes. There is also a hint of bubblegum, which I have scented before with Craigellachie.
With a few drops of water, the apples and the sulfur both really come to the fore. It becomes something very very close to the official 13 year bottling.
Mouthfeel: Silky, smooth, thick.
Palate: At first, it follows the nose quite closely - yellow apples, pie crust, pear tart, malted barley, leather and furniture polish... but then I get a distinct rising note of baking spices (cinnamon and allspice and cloves) and savory herbs (...thyme? Grass? Mint?). And they don't stop rising - they become a storm of spice and dryness and bitterness that carries into an awful finish. The sulfur remains present as well as a sort of halo of funk around all the flavors.
With a little water, there is a burst of apple sweetness before the sulfur and baking spices emerge and take over and ruin everything.
Finish: Here is where it goes off the rails completely. This is insanely dry and oaky - a major bite of pure oak wood with a landslide of baking spices. It dries your mouth out completely. It's a pure liquid vomit of sawdust and bitterness. I can't quite tell if the spices or the oak is providing the ultimate dryness, but transforms from sweet on the palate to beyond uncomfortably spicy on the finish. A shame.
The hints of smoke from earlier collect here and push the finish longer than it otherwise might last. What by all rights should be a short and almost painfully dry/spicy finish becomes a highly uncomfortable medium-length finish where the oak and spice are, mercifully, partially masked by a nice heathery smoke.
With water, the spices are less arid, and a cinnamon note is paired with a very leathery dry black licorice type note - quite unusual. But there are still a ton of oak tannins present, and it's far too much. The apple sweetness is nullified by the extreme amounts of dry oak and spice present here.
The only way I found to tame this incredibly bitter finish is to add some water and then let the glass sit for 30-45 minutes. At that point, the spices and oak are softened enough that the finish is almost - but not quite - palatable.
Verdict: The finish ruins the dram for me - but I guess you can't expect TOO much. Oak poisoned. The nose is quite good, with a lot of things going on, most of which carry through to a very pleasing development on the tongue, before exploding in a violent tornado of bitter spices, oak, and smoke... all in all, a very interesting (if not successful) independent expression of Craigellachie that hits all the expected notes and (unfortunately) adds a few more unwanted ones besides. I somewhat doubt I'll run across another Five Lions bottle anytime soon, but if I did - I would think twice after this. A fascinating single cask bottling, but nothing I would buy again.
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