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6 November 2018

Raasay While We Wait 2nd Release

What to do when you’ve built a distillery, but you have to wait before your whisky reaches the age of 3 years old? In the case of Isle of Raasay Distillery you just show off your skills by taking whisky from another distillery and let it finish for a while, to reach something that resembles what’s yet to come.

A very intriguing story! Raasay began producing in 2017, so while we wait we can enjoy the aptly named While We Wait, which contains peated and unpeated expressions from one (undisclosed) distillery and has been finished in Tuscan red wine casks.

Wine finishing and maturation is hard, it’s a hit or miss. And when we talk affordable core range expressions, it’s most of the time a miss. Let’s see what Raasay managed to do with their second release, in which the finish was a whopping 18 months:

Tasting notes


Colour

Pinkish gold

Nose

Sweet sweet grapes, beautifully earthy too, savoury, salty, fine wood, a metallic whiff and the nose suggests the palate’ll be a minerally experience.

Palate

Minerally indeed, silky too. Grapes, floral, vanilla, fresh barley and mango notes define this dram.

Finish

Sweetly infused wood, tropical, mostly grapefruit, juicy, minerally and a bit savoury at first, then we got some darker notes of dried fruits, raisins and fruit cake.

It’s incredibly easy to drink, but complex as well. The subtle peat influence does a great job at making this whisky a little earthy and savoury, without even touching the realm of smoke, very elegant. The wine finish is great, but you’ll have to love a bit of sweetness. Because this whisky is indeed pretty sweet.

It’s definitely something I’d recommend to anyone, from beginners to the more experience whisky lovers. It’s something unique and I’m eagerly awaiting what’s to come.