For the curious, the name of this is a Porsche reference. My uncle has more or less exclusively repaired and restored Porsches for the last ~50 years, and I have spent a lot of time around them (passively - never got to drive any of the customer cars, ha!). Fuchs is the company that made wheels for Porsche for decades, hence the reference to brake dust. Lots of soot/ash/oil going on in this bottle, I would guess.
I have a real fondness for Auchroisk. The second-ever bottle I bought from the SMWS was a crazy red-wine finished Auchroisk that was just off the wall - off EVERY wall - in terms of big unbalanced funky flavor. I've still never had anything quite like it.
Auchroisk, as I've mentioned before, is one of Diageo's many "silent" distilleries that pumps out tons of stuff for the Johnnie Walker blends - specifically, there is supposed to be a lot of Auchroisk in Johnnie Walker Blue.
For those who are into the independent bottling scene, Auchroisk can be a real crapshoot - I'm not sure I could really name a "signature" flavor for the distillery, or set of flavors... but I will admit that I am nearly always tempted by their whisky because damned if they aren't always interesting. Lots of Big flavors abound, and sometimes they are REALLY surprising.
This bottle, also from the SMWS, caught my eye immediately because it had been finished in a PX cask that previously finished an old Laphroaig. The mind reels and boggles at what this might taste like with that provenance! Here are the official notes:
Salty coal came covered in butter and splashed with strawberry wine. The palate was equally heavenly: sooty, with a clear salinity and joined by kelp, wild berries and millionaire's shortbread. Water offered a luxurious baconnaise, spread on burnt toast, along with peanut butter and plum jam on the nose. The palate had now become a steak sandwich with sweet onion jam, washed down with smoked peach iced tea. Enjoy the nostril-flaring minty finish. After seven years in an ex-bourbon hogshead, we transferred this to a PX ex-Islay cask – previously used to mature 29.268 (Laphroaig 22 year) – for the remainder of its maturation.
Intriguing! Bottled at 59.4% ABV, let's see if I agree with those rather wacky notes:
Nose: Wow, is that lovely and funky in turns. Coal and salt are indeed here in big amounts. I get the strawberry wine in the official notes, but only lightly. I get more macerated berries, heavy farm funk (wet soil, hay, grass, wild herbs). Definite notes of bacon, almost like dried Bac-Os you put on a salad.
Mouthfeel: Light body with a soft entry - almost no alcohol prickle.
Palate: A really wild palate on this one - just all over the map. "Steak sandwich" is strangely accurate - you get beef, bread, maybe au jus, pepper. Eventually sweet onion relish and dill pickles (!).
Very strange set of flavors, although I like them. Wildly savory ... but at then at the back of the development you get strawberry ice cream or gelato. Black tea. Potato chips! It's the whole lunch experience.
This is FULL of character, which I always love. But it's definitely not for everyone...
Finish: Weirdly long finish here - or maybe not so weird, given the Laphroaig-cask finish - of smoked fish, berries, pepper, and that steak flavor.
Verdict: I have such a soft spot for Auchroisk precisely because of bottles like this - wild, weird, adventurous bottles filled with truly crazy off-kilter flavors and almost no balance to speak of.
But who needs balance when you can drink a steak sandwich? With a coal-and-berry garnish?? No one, that's who. This is a strange bottle because it's both easy and difficult to pick out the influence from the PX-cask Laphroaig finish - the berries are obviously PX-oriented, and the smoke/coal/fish notes... but what about the beef? The pickles?
It's a question I used to ask all the time of certain SMWS bottles: how crazy was this cask that they decided to apply such a decidedly aggressive finish? I would pay good money for just a wee dram of whatever this was at 7 years old.
If you are like me and love scotch because it brings things to the table that absolutely no other spirit can deliver, this bottle is for you. No other liquor could hope to serve up a layered steak sandwich luncheon in a single glass of spirit.
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