Peaty AnCnoc — ‘Light on Dark’
The Rutter, Flaughter and Tushkar
Peated whisky always causes a stir with non-whisky drinkers and in my experience often strongly divides opinion…
TCP?!
Medicinal..
Ashy.
These are just some descriptors used negatively by those of a less peaty persuasion. However, for many people a peated whisky is the Holy Grail and distilleries such as Laphroaig, Ardbeg and Bowmore have thrived thanks to their peated offerings
It’s well known by peat heads that all whisky was originally peated due to the fact that the malting barley was done using the cheapest heat source available, in much of Scotland this was peat.
The escalating prices and expanding ranges of the core peated whiskies have perhaps helped to encourage distillers from outside Islay to begin using peated barley once more to appeal to the taste buds of peat heads on the way to their wallets!
Another potentially appealing point to manufacturers is that peaty whisky can, to some extent, mask the rough and spirity edge of young whisky, whisky that you traditionally wouldn’t want to sell.
Young peated whisky?
“Fire in Dumpster” (Creative Commons: Flickr/Ben Watts)
Highly peated, young whisky can be a novelty. The exceptional quality and relatively reasonable pricing of 10 year old peaty whisky — it’s never cheap enough! — from the likes of Laphroaig and Ardbeg make the appeal of young peated whisky relatively limited.
Thankfully what AnCnoc has produced — while lacking an age statement — is not a cheap gimmick designed to make a quick profit on the growing popularity of peated whisky.
I was lucky enough to take part in the twitter tasting orgaised by Alembic Communications in which we sampled all three of AnCnoc’s new range: Rutter, Flaughter and Tushkar. Named so after traditional peat cutting tools.
anCnoc Rutter (46%, 11ppm)
Nose: Mega peaty, quickly fades and gives way to something very creamy and overflowing with lemon. Smells sweetyand smooth — but not tame or dull.
That sweetness grows as time goes on, relatively simple . Peat, citrus, honey/fruit/sweets.
Taste: Very reminiscent of the nose. Sweet, but more lightly peated.
A nice well integrated creamy, buttery feel — that really coats the mouth. Lemon makes a reappearance as well as the fruits, maybe even apple. If you’ve ever had a ‘fruit’ winder sweet it’s almost a bit like that: except much better.
Finish: Oooh arrrr, it’s Ambrosia. Quite tart and bitters quickly. Not overly peaty, but a nice integrated peated dram with some nuance.
anCnoc Flaughter (46%, 14.8ppm)
Nose: Refined, quiet peat, floral, austere — dry, and musty
The peat slowly creeps up, along with that sweet shop again. I almost want to say that it reminds me of Ardbeg 10 when it’s been open for a while with only a wee bit left in the bottle. The peat diminshes a wee bit and the it gets altogether sweeter. Surprising given that it’s less than half the PPM(not a directly comparable measure of ‘peatyness’) of Ardbeg, not that I’ve tasted them head to head.
Whoosh of melon? Pepperoni? I guess I could say parma ham and melon, but that’s all too refined for me!
A clean and slightly reclusive dram. Not sure if I really managed to unpick this one.
Taste: Sweet peat — much more so than the nose would suggest, quickly dries. Hotter
Finish: ‘nom’.. that’s not a great description I know. It’s just an all enveloping, deliciously peaty, ashy finish.
Although there seems to be less to find on the nose here the palate is really intense and certainly leaves an impression.
Moving on to the final dram (scroll!).
anCnoc Tushkar (46%, 15ppm)
(Image — Creative Commons: Flickr/Joni Pakarinen)
Nose: The Tushkar is completely different to the others and not just because it’s only available in Sweden!
There’s something that I can’t quite put my finger on.
Citrus? Honey? Pear sweets? Lots of things going on, not just overwhelming peat — PPM(phenols per million) aint everything.
As time passes the smell gets a bit more wiffy with a dank earthy peatyness pushing through beside some slightly confusing, but still pleasant, hints of turkish delight and mint.
Taste: Sharp, lemony, sweet with a sherbet fizz. Back to the back of sweeties again.
A full statemet of ‘AnCnoc peat’ for me. Don’t try to out smoke and peat the Islayers, but create your own signature peated style.
Finish: Astringent, drying and unsurprisingly pleasantly peaty. A wee bit more bitter than the Rutter and Flaughter and not quite as much oomph on the finish as the latter either. Still a damn fine dram.
Conclusion
First and foremost it needs to be said that all three of these whiskies are good and I would most happily be given a bottle of any of them. These are good quality drams and that’s reflected in the price which is around £50. (Not that cost always equals quality in the whisky world. You can keep your £50,000 Dalmore and overpriced Macallan’s)
If you love your peated whisky then I would definitely say that AnCnoc’s new offerings are worth a try. Personally I would go for the Tushkar or the Flaughter. Unfortunately I don’t live in Sweden so it’s the Flaughter for me!
