N.8 portrays a spectrum of different smoke styles in one glass, from the rich tobacco and bonfire ember notes to more delicate tea and roasted
coffee bean aroma and even fresh aromas like burnt orange peel.
It’s comprised of a Peated, Highland Single Malt Whisky that we placed into a few different types of wood to push it in several different
directions, two lowland grain whiskies; one young and one very old, with a touch of what we’re calling our Campbeltown ‘superblend’. An ingredient that
seems to find itself in most of our whiskies in one form or other.
We wanted to keep this light, but with complexity. Clean, yet slightly filthy. Fun! If there's a peat freak subculture, we want to be the ones that offer a warm friendly welcome to the party.
In whisky world, everyone argues that the biggest influencer on flavour is either the distillery character or the wood that the whisky matured in. But in this expression – we would argue that the biggest influence on the overall flavour is the whisky maker; Pete!
Pete spent three weeks locked in our studio wrestling huge
flavours, big distillery profiles and a variety of peated expressions from all
over Scotland. The aroma was incredible, and we had to keep removing a pane of glass from our windows to air the room.
But eventually, we decided that this wasn’t about creating the most peaty thing on the planet or even letting peat dominate – the challenge was to celebrate the smoky profile, whilst letting other elements play a part in the blend too. We eventually arrived at a formulation that met our vision of rounded, peated whisky that was nuanced and balanced at the same time.
Lively, yet complex.
It’s a tough profile to blend with. A lot of horsepower in flavour terms – but if you can get these notes to behave, fall in to line, so to speak then you can build up pretty exciting flavour experiences.
That’s what this blend is all about. Taking a moment – letting it sit on the
palate for a second, and then sitting back and letting the experience engulf you, in a way that leaves you wanting more of it.