Raw cask…. One of the best bottling styles there is. This is as close to straight outta the cask as you can get. Non-chill filtered? This is barely even filtered, period. There are damn “floaties” in this bottle! Lots of them!! Char bits, fatty oil deposits, you know… all that stuff flavour comes from. This bottling literally has it all.

Nose

The first thing I noticed in this dram, this is not the huge funk bomb style of Ledaig we are all used to. Don’t get me wrong, there is funk, it’s just not smacking you across the face as much as it typically is. There is a peculiar sweetness to the nose. A kind of fruit sweetness. Like opening a can of fruit salad, you know the ones with those little red fruit pieces that everyone tries to get but there’s only about 3% of the entire fruit salad made up of these red fruits. With the Ledaig-ness added in, it noses just like that fruit salad with some pepper added in all while sitting down next to a simmering fire, ready to eat it.

Palate

Woah. Sweetness immediate on the tongue. Like a thick oatmeal with brown sugar spread over. Quickly followed by all kinds of brash flavours. Maritime influence shines through. Briney, peaty and heavy. Almost an ashy or smoked vanilla note slips out from the back. The Ledaig shows itself here. That musk and funk comes through but slightly different than in most Ledaig.

Finish

The finish is like fireworks in your mouth. A ton of noise being made all over but trails off fairly quickly. That spicy peat and musky maritime note holds on and a menthol note shines. Like smoking a menthol cigarette after eating a spicy peppered chicken wing….while sitting on a beach beside a fishing boat and a fire flickering away.

• Review by Sean Kincaid