Bruichladdich 2009 Bere Barley
Review by Bruichladdich
- Colour
Hebridean winter sunrise.
- Nose
An orchestration of heather flowers, gorse, primrose, rose petals, sea pinks on a drift of marine freshness. absolutely delightful and they set the olfactory system to cruise control. On the second rise you can detect lemon and honey, grilled pink grapefruit sprinkled with demerara sugar gliding in on a zephyr of wild mint and ferns, which further highlights the purity of spirit. This is followed by an interfusion of pomegranate, cantaloupe melon and ripe strawberries.
- Palate
The spirit is rich, full bodied and full flavoured opening on a brilliant combination of warm honey drizzled over toasted oak staves, with a hint of coconut and ginger followed by barley sugar over melon and pear. They mingle beautifully with the biscuity malt sweet flavours of the barley and this creates a vanilla wafer backnote.
- Finish
It is pure refined delicious flavours last forever. It oozes finesse and authenticity this is deliverance from e-numbers and chill filtration. This is the walk of life.
- Note
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Since we first resurrected this fantastic distillery from years of neglect, it has been our mission to pursue the ultimate pedigree, provenance and traceability of our raw materials in order to push the boundaries of the concept of terroir in artisanal single malt whisky. Chief amongst these ingredients is our barley.
Bere is the ancient landrace from which the illegal spirit uisge beatha was distilled back in the 18th century and from which modern whisky was to evolve.
Distilled in 2009 at Bruichladdich on the Isle of Islay, the grain for this release was grown in 2008 on Orkney and has produced a single malt of quite singular character.
The exquisite balance between the mellowness of the oak and the butterkist sweetness of the rare malted barley is impressive for one so young. Its very much alive and the taste buds are responding with joy to the rarest barley on the planet today.
