Octomore 01.1 Fierce or lovely; Doctor Jekyll or Mr. Hyde?

Jim McEwan of Bruichladdich has dazzled and influenced the whisky world with many of his exciting and innovative directions since taking over at the turn of the millenium.  Perhaps his boldest and most iconic direction is to make peated whiskies and bottle them young, at young hot cask strength, when the peat is fresh and fierce.  The excellent and popular Port Charlotte line exemplify this direction, but the ultimate expression of this style are the Octomores - the most highly peated whiskies in the world.  Octomore 01.1 was the first of the Octomore line and many reviews (such as this excellent one by Ruben at WhiskyNotes) identify it as the beefy brawny one.  Subsequent expressions have slightly higher phenol (peat) levels, but none were reputed to exceed it in intensity.  I didn't hesitate when an opportunity came to try it. 

Darth Vader is in the house.

Read it and weep: 5yrs 131ppm

Bruichladdich Octomore 01.1 Aged 5 years, 63.5% abv, peated at 131 ppm

Color:  pale chardonnay - a cliché, I know, but well warranted here.  Rich pale gold.

Nose:  putty, library paste, mineral clay, a hint of garage (motor oil, diesel, and petrol) and some maritime ocean air with notes of salt, iodine, and sea spray.  Further nosing reveals straw, dry malt, and some cut grass.  There is a hint of cereal sugars, but the nose is for the most part dry, mineral and industrial in feeling.

Chardonnay colored in the glass

All whisky progresses across the palate, but Octomore 01.1 divides the three phases of tasting (entry, mid-palate, and finish) into totally divergent personalities like Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.  Entry on the palate opens with a razor sharp burst of fresh clean vegetable sugars like treacle.  This sweetness is big - carried on the wings of a ton of alcohol intensity.  This sweetness is more than big; it is huge - and unexpected from the dry nose.  The sweetness steps aside 15-20 seconds into the sip and then the mid-palate explodes with rich peat.  Earthy, smoldering, notes of tar, clean hot burning anthracite coal, tire rubber, and oil coat the tongue and mouth.  Then 20-30 seconds later, at the turn to the finish, the big tar and fiery earth turns to ash, dense and with an almost bitter cast.  Over the next few minutes the ashes fade to a wistful echo of the piercing sweetness of the opening.  There are herbal notes in the sweetness of the long long finish.  A few minutes after the sip your palate is like a motorcyclist who has tumbled on the roadway and skidded many yards to a halt through the grassy margin and emerged scraped but unscathed: a bit raw but exhilarated (and perhaps a little freaked out).  There is char and herbs and a raw feeling on the gums, cheeks and tongue - the burn of 63.5% abv.  Better have another sip.  There's the putty, clay mineral and petrol nose.  Then WHAM, the huge razor sharp and extremely intense pointed sweetness of the opening and then the rich creeping triumph of huge mouth coating tar, anthracite coal and burning smoldering earthy peat fading gradually to ash and then wistful echo.  It's like the emotional progression of the Great War, from resolve to the wings of hope to the immolation of destruction to a melancholy burning rawness after the conclusion.  Ok, granted it's not an ordeal on that scale - but it is a wildly divergent set of fairly intense experiences. 

Samples bottled for the open shelf life experiment

Yes, drinking Octomore 01.1 is like a big journey from the heights of the most intense sweetness like angel's wings to the depths of fiery hell with the most char I've every had imprinted on my tongue by any whisky. 

How about a drop of water?  Water loosens the putty note in the nose and adds a distant bit of citrus and also some larger hint of the sugars.  Sweeter, fruiter, and a bit piquant; but still with that bit of garage and petrol.  The water does nothing to restructure that stately progression from intense sweet to intense fire to intense ash.  So I try adding even more water - about 10 drops total.  Now the nose is losing it, getting noticeably weaker but floral notes and sea moss have joined the citrus and clay and petrol.  But on the tongue the sweetness is less razor sharp and more lusciously honeyed.  The transition to the peat attack of the mid-palate is more gentle and gradual, and the peat attack itself is a bit softer with the vegetal notes and wistful sweetness showing up almost at the start of the finish so that the honeyed sweet entry almost seems to hand directly off to the ashy herbal sweetness of the finish.  Water makes it less intense, but no less lovely - perhaps even more so.  This is one of the very few drams I might actually prefer with a good drop of H2O.  

Comparing this to the Octomore 04.1 I'm struck more by the family resemblance than the differences.  Both are pale, powerful, razor sharp, and intensely sweet up from with huge earthy peat in the middle and huge coal ash at the end.  The 01.1 is has more motor oil, petrol, and mineral in the nose and midpalate.  04.1 is more earth and a more restrained refined aspect.  However they are clearly kin.  Both are exceptional experiences.  Both are extreme experiences.

Highly recommended, if you think you can handle it.  And if you can find it.  Try Park Avenue Liquors in NYC.

*****

This bottle will be part on an ongoing series of open shelf life experiments inspired by the fascinating series of experiments on the effects of oxidation and evaporation on whiskey left in open bottles performed by Ryan of Value Whisky Reviews / Value Bourbon Reviews.  Follow the link above to read his 3 posts on the topic.  The experimental methodology is to fill samples when the bottle is first opened and then compare them with the bottle over time as its contents oxidize.  I'll be performing these experiments on an ongoing basis.  Thus, when I opened this bottle I filled 5 two oz. sample bottles and will compare them with the remains of the bottle over time.  I'll be looking at mouth feel, aromatics, nose, and flavor and will use Ryan's five point scale of discernible affects.  I'll try to do comparison tastings at 3 months, 6 months, 9 months, and a year.