Bruichladdich Infinity Second Edition

Bruichladdich Infinity Second Edition wais in at 52.5 percent alcohol and is peated containing a blend of lightly peated older laddie with some peated spirit made in 1998 at the time the distillery was run in order to preserve some stocks and some new heavily peated Port Charlotte then all sloshed in to ex-Rioja casks for a polishing.

Nose: the usual fruits one expects from a wine finished malt, strawberries with smoke and oak. Water changes this drastically and the sweetness of icing sugar is evident. Port Charlotte’s signature fennels come to the front with time.

Pallet: big attack at full strength with sweet jam laced with peaty embers. When water is added the young spirit is more up front and I get a little rubber.

Finnish: medium long but a little too drying for my tastes.

Comments: something different for bruichladdich and a good fireside dram, an even better dram to drink outside. let down a little on the finnish.

The water of life by the hogshead from the Field Magazine

They don’t mention in the article that Glengoyne now offer casks for sale to the public. Not a bad piece though and if anyone’s interested in buying a barrel of whisky it’s a good read.



On the Hebridean island of Islay there are several distilleries (Laphroaig being
perhaps the most famous) all known for their peaty, iodine character. Bruichladdich
("brook-laddie") is in the south west of the island and does cask offers. The old
distillery, with its Victorian machinery, had been mothballed by its previous corporate
owner. It was bought up a few years ago by a private consortium led by Mark Reynier,
a whisky-obsessed former wine merchant, who wanted to re-establish this classic,
aggressively Hebridean malt of yesteryear. The multi-award-winning distillery and
maturation warehouse are on the shore and the sea mist gets into the barrels and
imparts a delicious, briny tang to a very lightly peated spirit. It's an upmarket
whisky for those who don't like the dominant, rather Germolene flavour of the heavier
Islay malts… The barrels Bruichladdich offers are imported casks from the Buffalo Trace bourbon
distillery, lending the spirit a hint of Kentucky yee-ha as it ages. Among the cask
owners is Andy Becalick, who set up a club of 30 or so fellow malt whisky addicts
in the Basildon area where they stave off the winter gloom with ample supplies. "We've
got six casks of five-year-old Bruichladdich between us.
"Some barrels have 20 owners, some six. We've spread the cost around and we've gone
for hogsheads. You basically pay for the new spirit and the barrel. The cost of storage
and insurance is included in the price for the first 10 years. When you bottle it
you pay costs, labelling, bottling, duty and VAT. Duty depends on whatever alcohol
percentage you bottle it at. So if you bottle it at the standard Bruichladdich percentage
of 46 per cent then it works out at approximately £75 per dozen bottles. On top of
all of that you pay 17.5 per cent VAT. The costs to us, we reckoned, are about £12.50
a bottle. Bruichladdich is willing to store some of your whisky in bond up there,
so you don't have to pay the duty until you are ready. One of our casks is already
delicious and bottleable at five years, but we are going to keep going longer to
see whether it gets better.
"We are starting to think about labels for the whisky. A group of us go up to Islay
every year. But for us it's not about the money - we haven't tried to make a profit,
we are not selling it and it's all purely for enjoyment. The fun we have sampling
the whisky with the locals is worth every penny."