New Smokers from Scotland!

The famous/infamous peaty whiskies from the glorious, gorgeous island of Islay in the Scottish Hebrides are well-known around the globe, often loved and, to be fair, sometimes hated. Put me firmly in the “love it!” camp, since acquiring my first bottle of Laphroaig in 1989. If you don’t love these bottles—that’s OK! You’re still cool! But if you do love the smokers, you’ll be as thrilled as I am to find some new offerings on your local liquor shelf…that is to say, exclusively at The Party Source.

We have the Port Askaig line of Islay single malts, named for the hamlet that greets the visitor to Islay when they hop off the ferry from the mainland. Just up the coast from Port Askaig (2,400 feet away as the crow flies) is Caol Ila Distillery, the largest on Islay and pretty much surely the source of this whisky. The Port Askaig whisky range is all bottled without chill filtration, featuring generous sherry cask aging at the younger ages, yet a 100% Bourbon cask regimen at the 17-year level, for a total purity of Caol Ila. I’ve always enjoyed Caol Ila; it’s not the very smokiest dram on the island, maybe an 8.5 to a 9.0 out of 10 on Jay’s Peat Scale. What it does have, on the backside of that smoky peat, is a glorious brininess that many have compared to green olives. And I sure do love me some olives.

Then, getting even more creative, is the Elements of Islay portfolio. These blended malt whiskies (I preferred the now-archaic term vatted malt, but it indicates a blend of multiple malt whiskies) bring in several distilleries from around Islay. The website mentions “rich, smoky single malt from Islay’s South Coast married together with a fresher, fruitier style from the North,” which suggests to me a peaty south shore malt (Laphroaig? Lagavulin?) mixed with, perhaps, some Caol Ila on the north side, and maybe there’s a little unpeated Bunnahabhain thrown in for good measure. The whole shebang is then treated to assorted cask aging—some sherry cask, some all-Bourbon, all of it rockin’! Bottom line, if you dig the peaty-peat, don’t miss Elements of Islay.