Excerpt: Creamy on the palate, with caramel, hot tar, sweet red wine, burning peat, antiseptic, chili, and brine. Licorice, pepper, and drying peat in the long, satisfying finish.
Excerpt: Fans of Laphroaig will appreciate that the typical phroaig-iness is very much present, just with some fun new flavor profiles to savor, and a pleasingly long finish with only a slight burn despite the proof.
Excerpt: Perhaps it’s the red wine cask that’s pushed things just a bit too far into sugar town? It’s not my favorite Cairdeas, but it is something different… and worth a peek at least.
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House Review
Intro:
Released as part of the 2020 Cairdeas family, this bottling comes to use after maturation in a variety of wine casks - port and red wine here. I wish they told us what kind of red wine, but they don't, so we'll just have to let our taste buds guide us here.
Nose:
Powerful! Big on char, honey, peaches, apricots, plums and toffee. Sweet wine means aggressive peat and some minerality. Tire smoke.
Taste:
Rich on the palate. Lovely and complex. Toffee, apricot marmalade, blackberry, stewed fruits. Ash, peat smoke, rubber. It all plays so wonderfully with one and other.
Finish:
Long finish. Smoky and ashy, made better by rich juicy fruits, strawberry, cherry and fig.
Overall:
This throws my mind back to the greatness of the 2013 Cairdeas - a perfect synthesis of acrid peat and juicy fruits. Delightful.
Score:
8
By t8ke
Our in house critic rates spirits on a scale of 0-10 (10 best) and is aggregated the same as external sources