hello you multi mazel two magnificent malt mates and thank you to scott pascoe
for providing a malt mention which is what you get at the beginning of a moment ralphie review
here in the buffy and uh i'm reviewing a painted single malt whiskey for you uh not unusual i i
have to add not in this channel and it's one that i actually reviewed about three years ago but i'm
coming back to it and i'm going to tell you why shortly malt mates so this is ralphie review 914
and just just for the record and this is ten-year-old port charlotte from
brookhladdy distillery i shall hold the bottle closely so that you can get a good clear
view of it or as we say in scotland a swatch at the bottle um all very designer it's got some
midnight green glass and um i'll actually quite quite like it when they when they have the raised
lettering on the glass it's kind of really quite old-fashioned but classy it always looks stylish
and it says isla single malt port charlotte uh pro progressive hybridian distillers progressive still
progressive hybridine distillers however i do notice on the bottle no mention
of natural color or unchill filtered and at times it's quite tough to read the label because
the lettering doesn't stand the coloring it's the coloring of the lettering for anybody with
sight issues like myself it's not easy and so the really excess the the the prioritized style
over practicality big time it's something that in any of my bottlings i would avoid doing that
excuse me my steampunk are steeping steaming up slightly that's better conceived distilled
matured and bottled at brookhladdy distillery i love isla product of scotland 50 percent by
volume i'll a single malt scotch whiskey uh 10 h10 aged years in oak casks and that is basically it
tells you who the distiller is but even when you go around to the back of the label um no no
no doesn't say anything about natural color and being unchill filtered now many of you
have known brookhladdy in the past you know it was always there they they really
valued that disclosure because they were progressive hebriden distillers
uh and it's not in the bottle here right let's pour a drum talking of which where is the broccoli
every now and again you get again you see you see a non-aged statement bottling a higher strength
which is commendable but where's the range i mean it's not a small distillery it's smallish but
you and i are perfectly aware that they've been producing a lot of whiskey for quite a number
of years and yet very very little appears to be in sale i'm sure there's a good reason for that
i last reviewed this
ralphie review 739
where i gave it 86 marks out of 100 and if you remember that review which was in august of 2018
so over three years ago you may remember that it was an uncharacteristically short review
in fact if anything has seemed rather brisk and dismissive about the whiskey
and i didn't mean to be but that's the way that's the how it resulted
because i tend to just give it as it is i don't edit and i don't sanitize what i'm doing
and the reason was that i enjoyed it but it wasn't anywhere near its full potential
and i know what port charlotte's capable of you see this time and again and again
and again and again and again with all these private casks that have surfaced
it's a magnificent pitted whiskey it really is it's it is a fantastic
embodiment of broccoli considering that broccoli have varied the tallest stills in isla and
they're not necessarily the best stills to produce a heavily paid whiskey because of all
the reflux and i i would say in my opinion it's a testament to the distilling skills of the staff at
brockhladdy distillery who made it but i'm three years on and i've come back to it out of curiosity
i like the bottle by the way i like the raised lettuce in the back i like that classy
and as soon as i knows it
i'm getting something wonderful as soon as i noticed that i took the cork off i didn't have to
wait i didn't have to let it breathe i didn't have to let it lie around oxidizing to get rid of the
the the bottle shock it immediately poured as a fantastic top-ranking single malt
definitely an improvement on the last time i bought a bottle
when you taste it uh now before i get to that that when you taste it but i think that's natural color
but this is broccoli hybrid deep progressive
progressive hybridian distillers that should be in the label that's basic stuff nowadays um
so i think this is an issue for the owners of the distillery who are back
mobile phone forget ignore it i'm ignoring it i won't even edit it out the show goes on
it's a more moment and again they can wait they have to wait
um
i remember when port charlotte first appeared they were bringing in barley from the maltings
in the north of scotland and they were getting parts per million readouts
as part of the process and then putting it on the label
as a sort of reference and i have to say it's a very vague reference because
you can take 200 parts per million phenolic content of any kilned malted barley
and you can put it in one still another still and a third still and get completely different results
so if you were to take exactly the same painted barley and put it into lager woolen
or glenn farkles or glen warnjie you would get three absolutely totally different flavors of
whiskey from exactly the same barley malted barley from the same source using the same yeast with the
same fermentation time you would get three very different results the lag of olin stills big
fatties great big fat necks less reflux so you'd get all the smoke coming over the heavy phenolics
england farklas because the direct fired stills you see all the stills are direct fired you would
get more toastiness you would get more bonfire notes from that painted grain and that glenn
morning with the tallest still necks in scotland you would get something far more refined something
far more delicate something far more nuanced in terms of pettiness and it goes without saying that
when would you last if you ever encountered it impressed with a peated glen monge
doesn't really stand out is it but um let's get on to this this single malt here because
as you know it's getting further and further between
with single malt reviews that i'm scoring 90 these days unfortunately it's a sign of the times and
it's up to me to continue to give it as i find it simple as i don't want to just kind of all
smiling oh it's wonderful this is the best it's all the look at the culture look at the heritage
oh look at the cascading streams coming down the mountainside you've heard all that elsewhere
you shouldn't be getting that feisted on you here in the bathy it's not my mission nose
oily smoke
fresh fruit slightly gingery vanilla sultana butterscotch
a little bit of
very mild almost mintiness and a little bit of absinthe
were very delicate in the background herbaceous absolutely
on the pilot wonderful top notch crystal clear absolute near near-perfect heavily painted whiskey
arrival this absolutely gives our big ten-year-old a run for its money seriously does i only hope
that bruh lady are going to maintain the quality batch to batch and i know they're listening
hello bruch lady now that we taste before i add some water
50 the alcoholic strength delivers
the intensity of the peat oh
i'm fine
if you like your peated whiskey's neat you'll enjoy this neat i'm adding five milliliters of
water it's 50 alcohol i'm not adding that much i'm probably not even reducing it to 46 at the moment
but i'm just bringing it down a little bit because when the when i cast strength whiskey
that's painted is neat the experience you have in the palette is all up front
it's in the arrival in the beginning of development and that intense peatiness acts
as an anesthetic to the development and finish of the experience it's kind of minty and a little bit
tongue numbing but as soon as you add water you just extend the range and improve the complexity
of the taste delivery it also helps open up the nose a little bit so coming back to the nose
same as before but now a little bit more oh confused i'm getting some fresh bourbon casks
here which have totally in the way they've worked kept the the phenolic intensity alive see when you
use flat casks and old casks and dumb casks you dumb down the spirit dumb casks are inert casks
when the casks have got nothing to offer they don't put anything into the whiskey
this maturing inside the casks the reverse happens the casks pull out of the whiskey they dumb down
the whiskey the spirit as it's maturing and this can start to diminish that can happen
not many people are going to tell you about that gotta ask
the people in the warehouses they know about it
another taste
warmer sweeter but not too sweet toffee-ish an enrichened ginger spiced up
longer lasting development it's less explosive on the arrival but with water in it you
have a good arrival you still got a bold arrival but now it's much more intact and
forceful as you go into the development on the tongue and into the finish it's crisper
and cleaner and it's got a little bit more honey and energy about it it just extends the
form of the whiskey the actual length of the experience that little bit further um this is
what i was hoping that port chart lit port charlotte would have been
for ralphie review 739 in 2018. it was a youngish more immature more restrained
more delinquent juvenile version of port charlotte it wasn't rounded the way i knew it could be
now in february 2022 in ralphie review 914 i can tell you this malt really has come of age this
is a fantastic version of it which bottling is it oh for good i don't have the eyesight
to see all these wee tiny little details of batch numbers and all the rest of it um but i bought it
i bought it in december 2021 if that helps you it's lovely stuff i must give this a mark mark
i'd love to be able to tell you that was it's an integrity bottling but where's the information
there's only one place the information should be yeah yeah i know i sound like a broken old
record that hey am i wrong no particularly when we're paying them money especially malt mates
with the money that's being asked now asked now we deserve the quality that that product can deliver
because see if it's not being delivered we are being seriously shortchanged 90
it's someone mark from the mother from ralphie for port charlotte i am a delighted this is a
distillery i'm rooting for it's gone far too quiet these days for its own good
we need to hear a wee bit more from bulk laddie now a basic range i don't know whatever and a wee
bit of integrity disclosure wouldn't go and miss hey it works for aaron it works for spring bank
mark thank you for watching if you would like to pop back again for ralphie review 914
extras i shall be talking about how whisky is changing over the years and what i notice as
a result of doing these reviews i think you may find it interesting so click subscribe
bang bell likey whatever and subscribe and all that's all the gubbins um what is it
smash yeah whatever it is smash it and i'll see you for ralphie review 914 extras bye-bye