I (Dennis) am not the biggest fan of the combination of sherry and heavy peat. That doesn’t mean there are exceptions to this rule, I only tend to be more cautious when choosing what to buy.

And if there’s an Islay distillery that manages to do it well in my opinion, it’s Kilchoman. I’m quite a fan of their bourbon matured expressions, but I also love their regularly released ‘experiments’. It ranges from Fino sherry to sauternes, and from rum to madeira. Knowing their base distillate is always a pleasure to drink, these cask explorations are fun to taste and review. I certainly don’t like them all, but that makes the chase to a killer bottle more worthwhile, I think.

This bottle has been waiting on my shelf to be opened for almost three years. Why? I have many opened bottles, and I like to have some bottles closed to have something to look forward to. Looking at my shelves and the opened Kilchoman bottles at the time, I decided this one could wait. A couple of months ago, the time was ripe and I finally cracked the seal. Will this 2011-2016 Oloroso matured single cask, bottled at 58% be as good as it looks like? I found out pretty soon:

This is so good. Kilchoman x oloroso do their job again. And a perfect example that preferences are hard to quantify into a basic set of rules. Too many factors weigh in. For every confirmation to your own set of rules, there exists an exception. And that’s what we keep looking for, always.