Allt-a-Bhainne 9 Year (Chapter 7)

It apparently is the season of new independent bottlings for me! First Five Lions and their bizarre, superoaky Craigellachie, now this 9 year expression of Allt-a-Bhainne. Allt-a-Bhainne is a small distillery founded in 1975 and owned by Pernod Ricard, and the vast majority of their output goes straight into Chivas Regal. I've never a seen an official single malt expression from them, but their independent bottling presence is pretty decent - they turn up fairly regularly from time to time. 

Chapter 7 is a company I don't know at all. Their motto is "A cask is like a character in a novel - the best ones tug at your heart and never let go." Well, that's certainly ambitious. Aged 9 years in ??? casks, and "finished" in an ex-bourbon hogshead (!?), this is bottled at cask strength (60.7% ABV) without filtration or coloring. Thank you to Rob Martin for the last dram in the bottle. Let's explore this mystery:

Nose: This is seriously pungent. Funky. A little weird in the classical sense - outside the natural order of things. I get dirt, moss, weeds, sulfur, metals, and - at the very top of the nose, so to speak - a nice floral fragrance trying to escape the rest. It's like the raw earthen floor of the dunnage warehouse where whisky ages. 

With water, this becomes less dense and a little "nicer" - which is to say the huge amounts of metal and earth are tamped down a little and some sweet woody vanilla notes come through. 

Mouthfeel: Exceedingly thick and viscous. Almost mealy, farinaceous, starchy. 

Palate: Total divergence from the nose. This is hot as hell - every ounce of the 60.7% ABV comes through here in a mad sweet that rushes through your mouth. Tons of sweet malt sugars. Honey. Hay. Apple pie. Vanilla. A little moss. A little something metallic. A wide streak of "meaty" sulfur that - as in Craigellachie - serves to underscore the sweetness very effectively. Quite a nice palate despite the massive wave of alcoholic heat. 

With water, this is much, much easier to drink. It's still hot as hell but the heat is like an apple turnover fresh out of the oven instead of a slap of booze in the mouth. Vanilla, honey, apples, toffee, malt barley, and the same earth-and-metal-and-grit from before, but less so. Nicer with water, but also less intense. 

Finish: Oak, baking spices, honey, a little pepper. Nice, normal Speyside territory. Short to medium length. 

Verdict: Well, that was strange... but fun! You could do a lot worse than this funky ass journey down Apple-Honey-Rotten Hay-Rusty Metal Lane. I would hazard a guess that Allt-a-Bhainne messed up the production a little and had a cask or two of heavily sulfurous Speyside distillate that they couldn't use in Chivas Regal. Chapter 7 bought it, aged it in the freshest ex-bourbon cask they could get their hands on, and the result was this interesting bottle. What a journey!