This week's episode of Barrel to Bottle comes from the Binny's Lincoln Park Tasting Room, where we have a fair bit of reverb, but a lot of excellent open bottles of Scotch Whiskey to talk about. That's right. You couldn't just bring these to the regular studio? I'm lazy. In my basement? We'll talk about it later. Joining us today is Pat Brophy. Hey, Pat. Hey, how are you doing? I'm good. And Greg Versch. Hey, Kristin. We've got two special guests that join Pat Brophy, our regular host on Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast, the other two members of the Whiskey Hotline. First, we've got Mr. Joseph Edward Maloney. What's up, dude? Howdy, neighbors. Good to have you today. Thanks for coming. Good to be here. Thanks for having me. And we've got Brett Pontani. Hey, Brett. Hello. This is the Whiskey Hotline in Toto right here. With a table full of Islay for part two of our All About Islay podcast series. Yeah. So thanks for sticking with us. We're making our way through and we're having a good time. How big is Islay? Smaller than Delaware. Like, probably the same... Where the hell is Delaware? You know, I mean... What the hell is Delaware? If you own a limited liability corporation, you would know where Delaware is, because that's where you file your taxes. I felt like Islay was kind of like the size of Cook County. Yeah, that's probably about right. Okay. And the relationship of these distilleries, are they tight together or are they spread out? They're all within 30 minutes of each other, which means they're only within a couple of miles of each other. Just most of the roads on Islay can be better described as goat paths. Certainly the road to Boonehaben is certainly a goat path. And they were all placed on water. So you have a series of distilleries at the very bottom of the island around Port Ellen, which would have been the old Port Ellen distillery, which doesn't exist, Laphroaig, Lagavulin, and Ardbeg. Then you have the ones on the top of the island, which would be Calila and Bunahavn, and now Ardnajo, which is going to be distilling very soon. It's going to be the ninth distillery on the island. And then you have distilleries on Lockindale, which would be Behmore and Brooklottie, which is the big inlet that comes in off the Irish Sea. And then the one outlier that's a true farm distillery is Kilholmen. And that's kind of more in the center of that. Literally in the middle of the farm. So the island itself is 239 square miles. So that's pretty small. It's pretty small. Yeah, like Brett said, I mean, it's right off the Irish Sea, too. On the southern end of the island, you look across on any clear day, you can see Northern Ireland. All right, so next we are moving on to the distillery made even more famous by one Ron Swanson, Lagavulin. Already a pretty household name for Scotch. Oh yeah, I mean, Lagavulin is one of the big names on Islay, obviously. This is a beautiful presentation. Yeah, so we're actually going to start with the newest Lagavulin release, the 8-year-old. This is fun, too, because this initially was a limited release. There was supposed to be just a one-time deal, but people went so bananas for it when they got it that they actually brought it back and kept it. Yeah, this was released a couple of years ago for the 200th anniversary of the distillery. Immediately it was a huge hit, it was only $55, and it just flew out of here. And thankfully, we forced the Agio into making it full-time. So thank you everyone who bought it. Thank you everyone who drank it. And furthermore, we're going to have another 8-year-old smokey one showing up in the fall, I think, in the form of Talisker. Yeah, as part of their new Game of Thrones thing, which we'll, maybe we should do a cast on that. God bless you, Talisker. Thank you, Talisker. Sadly, it's going to be House Squid, whatever the squid is. House Squid? I don't know House Squid. It's the Squid House in Game of Thrones. The Greyjoys. Greyjoys. All right, Lagavulin, 8-year-old. Everyone's kind of had the classic Lagavulin 16, which we're going to try next. But it's known for being more of a balanced smoke. It's got a lot of sherry influence, a little real heavy contemplative scotch. And I really like this one, because it's the total opposite end of the spectrum. It is fresh. It's got a minerality to it. It's just everything I love in good young Islay whiskey. Vibrant and youthful. It's floral though. I think it's got a little bit of that frankincense kind of smell, that sort of church incense. Nice fruit too. Some apple on a little banana. Well, one thing I think is a common thread between these scotches is they all have an underlying fruit quality, whether it be citrus or stone fruit or a little bit of cherry, but they all have a fruity element to them. And I think in Islay, when you're incorporating that peat into the production, it's really important to balance out the savory and the smoky with a little bit of that fruit. And that's the fruit's going to be a consequence, right Pat, of kind of the more lighter alcohols during the distillation process. Yeah, lighter alcohols. I mean, that could also be a fermentation thing too. A longer fermentation is going to generally produce some fruitier flavors. Spicy wood on the palate, two by four plank and a savory meat. Brett hates it when I say ham, but there is actually like a hammy finish on this one. As a vegetarian, I think we can all agree that you don't know anything about ham. That is correct. I'm from Iowa. Vegetarian from Iowa. Yeah. What's the proof on this guy? It's lower. We're sitting at 96. Actually, it's not. It's 48% alcohol. So a little higher than the classic Lagavulin 16. Well, it really hides it. It seems really mellow and rich. I find it really refreshing. A very refreshing Islay Malt. Yeah. This is my beach Islay Malt, for sure. The hot day on the beach. For those 97-degree days, you're actually outside. Yeah. This is the smoky Islay Malt for good humid beach time fun. When you're in your basement f***ing about the heat, that's what you do. That's exactly right. That's correct. We know that Pat Brophy's mortal enemy is the sun. Now, he's talking about when it's 46 degrees outside and he's being hit by the briny mist coming off of the Irish. Yes, I still have the air conditioning on. What's the strait? What's the name of the waterway between Scotland and Northern Ireland, North Ireland? The Irish Sea. They're getting the briny mist blowing in off the Irish Sea, wearing a huge loose knit wool sweater. Is it a cardigan? No. He's wearing it. Okay. He's got one of those silly hats. I don't wear sweaters. He does wear silly hats. I do wear silly hats. Too many hats. I was looking forward to wearing my silly hats this week, but then it got hot again. Here comes a classic, you guys. Lagavulin 16. Ron Swanson's favorite, Lagavulin 16. The classic Islay Malt. Lagavulin was once the best-selling single malt coming out of Islay, but it was production declined for them in the 80s. They weren't, nobody was making a lot of scotch in the 80s because nobody was selling a lot of scotch in the 80s. And they were since surpassed by Laphroaig and Beaumont. Recently, they've started producing more than Beaumont again, but they still lag behind Laphroaig as far as overall sales and popularity. Love it. Love the nose. Pretty woody cedar. It's got that leather component going on. Pencil shavings. It's not as pronounced as the others though. It's kind of more reserved. You have to get a little bit friendlier in the glass to get the layers out of it. Man, this is good. Again, this is one that just opens up, but it takes a while. You sit there, sip on this for a long time, keep going back to it, you're going to smell and taste different things every time you go back. I like this a lot. What's our retail price on this, Greg? $89.99. Actually, that's a pretty good price for a 16-year-old Scotch whiskey. Yeah, I mean, for me, the general rule is if I can get it for $10 a year, I'm pretty happy. What's the deal with age statements in Scotch, just to clarify? Does it mean, is it the average, is it the youngest? The youngest. That is the youngest juice in that bottle. I mean, how old is the oldest juice sometimes? Are they throwing a little bit of their 30-year in here, just to give it some oomph? They certainly used to be. Chances are not so much anymore as demand caught up with supply. Certainly back in the 90s, there was probably significantly older juice. That's why there's legendary spring banks from the 90s that were 21 years old, that were actually 37 years old. Because we got to remember too, the real threat in Scotland for this whiskey is that it's going to dip below the 40 percent and then it's no longer whiskey. If you got something that's really close and you don't know what to do with, you can still use it so they would have... Because we're losing alcohol and not water during the evaporative process. Because we're losing alcohol during maturation, once it drops below 40 percent, it would have to be blended back with much younger whiskey to bring it back up against, up above that legal minimum of 40 percent. So why did you age it that long and sit on money for that long if you're going to let that happen? Well, once again, Silly Hat's off to the blenders in Scotland because man, what a job. It's an art form. Yeah, I was tipping your Silly Hat by the way. Well, this is a glorious malt. This is really one of my benchmarks. It is glorious. You know, just a wonderful balance of smoke, sweet, spice, a little salt. It's okay. It's not as hot as the others, not as drying as the others, but I like that. I like when I can drink a scotch straight up and I still have saliva in my mouth. There's something to be said for low proof whiskey. Yeah. We get too caught up with natural strength and cask strength stuff as whiskey nerds, and there is something to be said for being able to sit down with a glass of whiskey and just drink the damn whiskey. There is no correlation between quality and cask strength. You know what I mean? It doesn't mean it's a good whiskey just because they didn't add any water to it. No, but it does mean I bought a bottle of whiskey concentrate. It can make it go longer. Yeah, and it's easier to add water than to take it away. That's correct. It's really hard to take the water back out, you guys. That's what I found out. So, we're going with Caol Ila, and now this is when I'm starting to make some faces, because I know we're getting into the... We are getting into the Petey Boys. I tasted a bunch of these, and here we go. So, moving on to Caol Ila here. Caol Ila is the largest distillery on Islay. For years and years and years, this was really just not sold as a single malt at all, only by independent bottlers. And it was... So, would this be something that... Gordon and MacPhail, signatory? Signatory, thank you. So, this would be... So, the two bottles we're tasting are actually both Gordon and MacPhail today. We're tasting one, a young one in Bourbon, and a young one in Sherry. So, it's more the source from a negotiate kind of standpoint. Yeah, pretty much. And for years and years, this has provided a lot of the smoky backbone for various Diageo blends. Johnny Walker Black, things like that. This is an interesting name, Pat. How do you spell this distillery? You spell this C-A-O-L-I-L-A. All right, right on. It's one of my favorite to say. It's one of the easier ones to remember, I think. In the line up here, Pat, that you created for the tasting, this is kind of the third from the top in terms of peat, the big three. So, I mean, it's pushing 50 parts per million peat, but Laphroaig and Ardbeg both claim to be kind of firmly above that. Again, they're using the same 55 ppm peak smoked barley malt from the Port Ellen maltings that everybody else on the island is using. They're just using slightly less of it than the last two. This is really warm. I guess I don't really know what I mean when I say that, but I just feel like it's really warming. Well, it's 58% alcohol. It doesn't really drink 58% though to me. It is nice and round and warm, warm as far as the alcohol is there. But for me, it's more warm flavors. That is quite spiritual. That's what I'm saying. I disagree with you guys. I think it shows it's alcohol. Oh, I don't think so. It's super drying. Right away, that alcohol just dries the spit off the tongue. There's a good acidity here. The Whiskey Hotline has long been fans of young bourbon barrel-aged caol Ila. It's something we look for every single year when we go to Scotland. It is becoming harder to find because we used to always do a six or a seven-year-old. Now even that stuff, that young has been turned over to blender, stuff like that. So it's becoming hard to find. We're finding a lot more 10 and 11-year-olds. Still fantastic whiskey. But I think the younger stuff drinks better than what you see bottled at the distillery. The youngest stuff you get on the shelf is 12 years old. I think stuff younger than that is better. Oh, yeah. Well, I'm about younger Ilas in general. It's like I said earlier. There's a lot more layers to them. There's a lot more fruit. There's a lot more complexity. I mean, they kind of just get flabby and tired and they just become this mess of, you know, dried raisin and apricot and salt and a little bit of smoke around the edges. And there's a lot more there when they're younger. That's my complaint about the Lagavulin. It's tired. It's just, it's what it is. I mean, but that's what a lot of people want and there's nothing wrong with that. You know, that's a great whiskey. I'd like to see you try the Lagavulin Distillers Edition, Greg. I'd like to see me try that, too. Because we take the one we just had and then finished in a sherry barrel, Pedro Jimenez. So it ends up tasting like bacon wrapped dates to me in liquid form. Yeah, it's a wonderful bottle. So Caol Ila, again, backbone kind of smoky blender malt. I love it because it's a clean smoke. Caol Ila is always about kind of that clean barbecue smoke, not as earthy and dirty as something like the kind of the smoke we saw in Brook Laddie, for example. Those poor charlots had a very earthy character to them. A fun thing to do with these independently ones that we get too that are aged in bourbon barrels, say if you are a bourbon drinker and you want to try something smoky, this is a fun one to go through because you can go and kind of extrapolate out the All right, let's try the Sherry guy. So the Sherry one was a 2017 Binny's Handpicked Cask, 10-year-old, aged in a refilled Sherry Hogshead. Hogshead is a recouperd kind of barrel, so they took a Sherry butt at some point and turned it into a 250-liter Sherry Cask that they're calling a Hogshead and a refill. So they used this Sherry barrel once before for something else, possibly Caol Ila, possibly something else at Gordon MacPhail. And then they had Caol Ila filled into it. And this one is a little stronger than the last. This is 59% alcohol. These are the first ones that are actually attacking my gums. That hit my palate. Obviously, an immediate color difference here. Yes. Kind of that, again, that kind of classic Uncle Money Bag's Library Scotch look to it. It's got that green tinge. It looks like, almost like a madeira. Ooh-wee. You got enough there, Joe? Oh, yeah. I have a gentleman's measure here. The gentleman's measure. I can't get enough Caol Ila, you guys. I apologize. Especially, to have Sherry-aged Islay whiskeys is really one of my favorite treats, because I do love the Sherry-finished whiskeys, or even just Sherry-matured whiskeys in general. So I'm a sucker for the raisins and the dark-stewed fruit flavors that come through, and then put it in the smoke and I'm in my happy place right now. We're talking a lot of Oloroso barrels. Are they using Monteado as well? Some are, you know, I'm not entirely certain. So many of them are broken down and turned into a hog's head. I think it's hard to kind of track the provenance of many of them. And when they know, they tend to label it like PX when it really has that note. I just wonder, I'm sure they do use some Fino or Manzanilla barrels, but I'm just wondering in this particular case in Islay, if that's maybe not desirable because it would. I think it is mostly Oloroso. So, climbing farther up this peat ladder into Geekdom, we're at now at Laphroaig. Laphroaig's flagship is of course the 10-year-old. Obviously, that's not good enough for the Whiskey Hotline, so we're pouring the Cask Strength Limited Release 10-year-old. This beautiful bottle comes out once a year, usually every summer, and it is now on its 10th release, I believe. So, Laphroaig 10-year Cask Strength. Laphroaig, Laphroaig. So, Laphroaig 10-year Cask Strength. Greg, can you spell it without looking at the bottle? L-A-P-H-R-O-A-I-G. Good job. Everybody can spell Laphroaig, buddy. But most people say LaFrog when they come in. Yeah. It's big. Like honeycombs. So, that honey, that's interesting. Honey is one of Laphroaig's kind of hallmark characters, is that they always have that peat smoke and that iodine, and they always have this backbone of honey running through almost every single whiskey they've ever done. I always kind of try to break the descriptors of Ila Peat in the three rough categories. I always think of, when people ask me, well, what this is, you're talking about iodine and meat and all these things. So I always think of the world of things like Brooklottie and Calila and Kilhoman probably fits in there. Bunahave or B'mor probably fits in there. Those are sort of the breezy maritime ones where there's a little bit of iodine character to it, but it's mostly a little bit of meaty character to it, but it's mostly like literally what your clothes would smell like if you just got done having a cookout on a beach on the ocean, right? So it's nice, bright, racy, briny. Then there are the ones like Lagavulin and Ardbeg, I think Talisker from a different island, which are the really meaty. It's just like you're standing over a grill on the beach on the island smelling that meaty characteristic and Laphroaig, which is incredibly unique because it is so phenolic and they use a component that is so heavily peated. That's that signature iodine medical hospital that you might pick up hints of in other whiskeys, but I think that you... It's like for me a dog whistle to pick up a couple of... This is a big step across this whole flight. This is where it suddenly is kicking in. And technically isn't chemically... Technically Ardbeg actually uses the highest average Pete's spec. Ardbeg is higher Pete's spec. A lot of people, if you taste them side by side, would say Laphroaig is peteer. And this 10 year old, in my humble opinion, has always been because of everything that you've described, because it's got that massive racy forward iodine smoky character that you expect out of Laphroaig, but there's so much other stuff going on that you can actually taste over the smoke because of the strength. I think the alcohol helps. I think that they use a little bit more proportion of sherry in this than they do in their regular. So you get a little bit more sweetness and body because of that. A little bit of roundness, I think. So a couple of fast Laphroaig facts, fast froggy facts. Yeah. In their in-house maltings, I mentioned before that makes them about 15% of their overall malt needs. In-house, it actually takes them six days to get their barley to germinate, which is pretty long. Oh, wow. Yeah. That's real long. They were, the last time we were there, they were using barley, predominantly grown on the East Coast of Scotland. They're not looking for any specific strain. They're just kind of looking for what has the lowest nitrogen levels each year because it's going to give the largest yield in the still house. So of their malt needs, the 85% that are getting commercial malt is around 45 ppm to 55 ppm. Peat smoke malt from the Port Ellen maltings, the rest is getting malted in-house. And it's actually peated to a higher percentage than that 55 in-house. So of the in-house stuff, I said that it is 100% peat smoke malt. They uniquely are using 100% hand-cut peat. And that is like a roller industrial shredder mill versus a tahona with tequila. For anybody paying attention to tequila out there, the whole concept behind this is that it's a gentler process on the peat itself. So when you use a big industrial peat harvester, it's this big machine that drives across the bog, it lifts up the top layer of soil, and then it kind of scoops out all that peat underneath. And while it's doing that, it's very rough on the peat. It's compressing it, it's squeezing water out, it's just, in their opinion, kind of messing it up. And where they have dudes with the kind of the old school peat cutting tools, just cutting it out one brick at a time, it's much easier on the peat itself. It retains more water content, and because it's a wetter peat, it gives them a smokier character on their malt. Pretty cool. Yeah, and if you drive anywhere on Islay, you pass it, because essentially the whole center part of the island is a massive peat bog of which Laphroaig owns a lot. Yeah, and so where we almost hit the sheep. Yeah, we almost hit a sheep there. There's sheep everywhere. You know, in their in-house malt, they actually smoke the barley for 17 hours, and then takes another 17 hours to dry it after that. Wow, cool. They burn one ton of peat per seven tons of malted barley. Yeah, that's a lot. It's mostly water weight, right? Well, yeah, it's a lot of water weight. Still, wow. I thought it was relatively compact. It's compact, but there is moisture. It's so old, I'm sure, but I thought that... Are they worried at all about running out of peat? Yes. You would think so, yeah. We're not close, but I think that there's a... in however many decades, there's a day zero. They started thinking about it. So Laphroaig, as a whiskey, generally has a pretty fuller body, but that actually all comes from the casks types that they're aged in. The stills themselves have very steep line arms coming off the top of the still, and it creates a lot of reflux. So they actually have a pretty light-bodied spirit. Overall, though, all that kind of weight and heavy mouthfeel is coming from the casks, which leads us to our next Laphroaig selection. We are next going to taste the Caretchus 2018. Joe, how do you think Caretchus is spelled? Oh, I'm so glad you asked that, because this took me a long time. C-A-I-R... Wait, can I have it used in a sentence? Spell Caretchus, motherf***er. A-I-R-D-E-A-S. Yes, Caretchus is pronounced Caretchus. It is a once-a-year limited release bottling from Laphroaig. Changes every year. The 2018 version, which we're going to taste here, was aged in first fill bourbon barrels and then finished in pheno sherry casks. Cool. What can you tell us about pheno sherry, Kristen? Pheno sherry is aged biologically under a protective layer of yeast called flour, which gives it a very pungent dough-like aroma with peanuts and citrus. Fantastic. And this carchis is bottled at full strength, which I believe is 58 point something percent? 51.8. 51.8. I was a little off. This is very interesting. Very floral. It's kind of tamed that iodine a bit on the nose. The bigger interesting question that some people might say is, is the sherry that was in the wood more important or the wood itself? So, is it more important that there was a Phenosherry in here? Or was it more important that it was a 500 liter barrel made out of Spanish oak? Spanish oak or French oak or possibly American oak, depending on. Yeah, so this Laphroaig carch is kind of a nice kind of fruity twist on that classic Laphroaig formula. I'm interested to see how this Laphroaig stands up next to the pedius of all peat, Ardbeg Scotch. All right, moving on to Ardbeg. So we're going to talk Ardbeg, and we, of course, have to start with the classic flagship 10-year-old. So this is their iconic bottling. It's in like 180 countries. It's everywhere. This is an iconic bottling in the Scotch world, really. Yeah. So Ardbeg, pretty small distillery overall. One funny quirk at Ardbeg is at some point generations ago, one of the stills was dented in the back. And there's such weirdos about consistency with their stills in Scotland that every 20 years or so, when they need to order a new still, they order an exact replica. Like they come out with a laser measure and if a rivet's in one place, they make sure to keep a rivet in that place. Even though stills aren't even riveted anymore, they put a fake rivet in just because it may or may not affect the overall character of the spirit. So there's this like fist sized, oddly shaped dent in the back of one of our Ardbeg stills. And every time they order a new still, they have this dent like laser measured, like a WeatherTech floor liner. So it has the exact little contours and everything exactly the same. And they order a new still that comes with the stupid dent in the back of it. That's one guy, like long ago, covering his ass forever. This, total screw up, this is important. This is what makes it awesome. This is creating an extra reflux and it's going to impact our spirit if we take that out. Either that or they got really lucky and the still was collapsing and they got lucky that it stopped before it exploded. That's probably a bit more likely. So, World of Whiskeys last March, the Barrel to Bottle table was right next to the Ardbeg table, which was awesome. I mean, you could smell all the whiskey in the air. But one thing I liked about what they did is they put Ardbeg in a Bloody Mary. And I loved it. I thought it was absolutely fantastic. A Bloody Margaret. A Bloody Margaret. Thank you. Yeah. They had oysters. They had that too. So Greg could actually eat something that was served at an event. That was sweet. That wasn't bacon-wrapped pig muffins. This man, he's a prolific devourer of cheese. There's plenty for him to eat at every event we put on. All right. And this is pretty good Ardbeg, huh? Yeah. I mean, it is seriously peaty. It's got an earthy smokiness to it. But it's not totally unbalanced. Refreshing citrus, lots of lemon here. The sweetness is what stands out for me on this. Sweet and round. Yeah, balanced. I mean, this is 100% about balance. Now, we talked earlier about how the peat level consistently decreases during production. So talking to the distillery manager at Ardbeg, the last time we were there, Mickey Heads, he mentioned that when they buy the peat, it's all specced to 55-ish parts per million. Some batches come in a little higher, some might come in a little lower. But he says, by the time it's done fermenting, it's lost five ppm. By the time you're done distilling, it's lost another five to ten ppm. By the time it's done aging, it's lost another five to ten ppm. So he says the actual ppm in the Finnish whisky is probably closer to 35 or 30. And that has to track with everybody. That wouldn't be something that's unique to them. Definitely not. But you ask anybody how peat it is, they're going to give you the malt spec ppm. They're never going to give you that real distiller answer though. Yeah. And it's funny because you said that everybody buys the same peat spec in their malt, and then uses it in proportion with unmalted just to get to what they eventually, they mash in and ferment to get the liquid. Ardbeg's peat spec is they will take anything over 50. If it's 100, they don't care. That was the genesis of the Supernova Project. They were bottling casks. They found a cask that was 10 or 15 years old, that was super, super, super peaty. They're like, where did this come from? So they did some research, Bill Umstendon, and found out that he just traced it all the way back to the malt that was delivered that day, and found out the malt that delivered that day, they actually measured out of now parts per million of like 100. And he said, hmm, that's interesting. Go back through the records, find every record of every malt delivery, find out what we distilled that day, where it went, and if any of these barrels exist. And they ended up finding a few hundred of those barrels that they had, that were distilled with malt that they had taken a peat speck of over 100 that day. And they would have never noticed it because it was a blend. It's a blend, it's a single malt, but it's blended together. So they were blending it together and all of a sudden they got this one cask. It's like, holy cow. Which tells you how much variance you can have in the peating level of malt when it gets over to a distillery. So the next Ardbeg that we're going to taste isn't quite an Ardbeg. It's Compass Box No Name, which is a limited-release Compass Box that came out this past year. But even though it says Compass Box No Name, it's actually pretty old Ardbeg, like 17-year-old Ardbeg. It's right on. Something that if Ardbeg bottled it, they would want many hundreds of dollars for. Compass Box wants like $120 for it. Pretty awesome deal. And the Binny's Gold Standard bottling by Compass Box contains some of the whiskey that was leftover from the No Name bottling. Yep. So is that multiple barrels that they blended? Yes. Okay. It smells pretty awesome and pretty familiar. Yeah. It's got that familiar clean meaty smoke, but it's definitely the scale has tipped in the balance of the wood, I would say. Yeah. Plus spice and pepper. Finish is so spicy and earthy and peppery. I really like this. It's smoke, but it's not as dirty up front. Yeah. It's mellow and round at the beginning. A lot of like caramel and toffee and then all the stuff piled on top. Wow. Yeah. It's really elegant. The way it's layered up with the flavor. Just fat, round, lots of flavors flowing through. It's beautiful whiskey. Is this still available? This is still floating around. I mean, we didn't sell out of it right away. Somehow, a couple of stores where people were really onto it, bought it right away, but I see it around at a lot of our stores still. Wow. Yeah. Now, this is delicious whiskey. 120? I believe. Wow. Act fast. Also, it looks cool. Yeah. I mean, it's Compass Box. It's got a real cool label. It's got like Norse runes on it and stuff. It's very metal. Yeah. It looks like you could use it to summon Pinhead. All right. One last little taste here for us to put Petey Whiskey in perspective. We have some straight off the still Newmake Ardbeg. Why are you doing this to us? Because we can and we have the product and it's educational. So this is 63.6% ABV, pretty standard proof coming off a still in Scotland. This was bottled back in 2011 though, I think. I just cracked that bottle open though earlier this year. Brett, little teamwork. Oh, look, it's Ardbeg Newmake. That's awesome. We love Newmake. Which you can't see on a podcast obviously, but that green cast is interesting from at least partially from the copper. Yeah. Yeah, it's definitely not crystal clear like water. There is a little bit of color to this. Light straw or grass, light green. I'm afraid that every whiskey that we've tasted so far today would make a good chaser following this. Yeah, maybe. I mean, it definitely smells like raw fermenting barley, strong ethyl alcohol. A lot of vegetable notes. But it just doesn't jump smoke, which is interesting to me. You would think this is where the most smoke you're gonna have post-distillation is right here. Because it's gonna continue to fade. And the smoke's not there. The peat's there. That kind of, that earthy, dirty peat's there. But there's not a ton of smoke. It's so spirited. It's supposed to be, though. And it's got that, like, tart green apple quality. I just love this Newmake. I want a bottle of this. It's good to have Peated Newmake to try because one of the reasons why peated whiskey will drink extremely well young is because of those really sharp, spicy elements at the back end in the alcohol. So, if you put something in wood, for the first few years at least, a lot of what you're going to get out of the wood is going to be a very, very sort of green, unpleasant, woody character. You get away with peated whiskey going into wood at that age because that spicy character of the whiskey will cover up those green notes in the wood, which is why you don't, you'd almost certainly never see a seven-year-old McCallan anywhere, but we regularly do seven-year-old Laphroaig's, Caol Ila's, whatever distillery we can get at that age. Because that peak character that you're talking about, Greg, actually covers that green wood character. It masks it very nicely. hides the youth. Kind of like rye whiskey. Rye whiskey drinks very well young because that's raw, spicy, minty, dill character of the rye, hides those otherwise overpowering raw wood notes, but really young bourbon doesn't necessarily hide it like that, like a young rye wood. There's a fennel spice quality to this, and I've noticed similar things from Buffalo Traces New Make. Is that all in the grain or is that some of that from the peat too? The fennel, the spice, I think is a lot from the peat. I would be interested to see what you would, it would be so hard to get a take on what Ardbeg would produce unpeated. They have made unpeated malt before, but you have so much peat that's just hanging over in your kit that you would never completely eliminate the character because you'd never be able to completely clean your stills. And then it also has like an actual like on the palate visceral sweetness and that could just be the alcohol. Yeah. But I mean you associate some of that quality with the wood, especially like the Sherry Castle. Well, and they get a lot of reflux. So with a lot of reflux, you're gonna get a lot of Asteri character and that Asteri is gonna contribute sweetness too. After this tasting, I'm gonna have a lot of reflux. Yeah. I'm thinking too with this Ardbeg for maybe some of our listeners that are maybe a little scared to try this level of peat, a good introductory one would be the Anno. Yeah, the Ardbeg Anno, which is bourbon aged with a little bit of PX Sherry finish into it. A younger Ardbeg, non-aged stated. Yeah, definitely has that sweet kind of velvety blanket kind of wrapping up that peat. Guys, how do you spell Anno? A-N-O-A. Two words. Two words. All right. Someone's put a pin in this thing, huh? All right. So one of the things we've noticed is that, especially on tasting that new make, it's not necessarily just about the amount of peat, but it's how you use it, how it integrates in the rest of the spirit. And like all things single malt scotch, the big overarching influence here is the casks and the cask selection. So we tasted Laphroaig and Bourbon barrels and Laphroaig and Sherry barrels, Kilhoman and Bourbon and Sherry, same thing with Caol Ila, same thing with Lagavulin. We see all this broad range. It's not just age statement, but it's cask that matters pretty much more than anything with the scotch industry. For sure. This really highlights for me as well, the skill of the blenders and what they're doing to keep consistency. Yeah, the fact that that Lagavulin 16 tastes exactly the same every time you go back to it, that's saying something for the guy in charge of making sure that it tastes the same. Oh, yeah. Well, how do you take such intense flavors and actually keep them somewhat restrained? Yeah. Because theoretically with the flavor is so strong in the peat that you shouldn't be able to taste anything else. We said it before, smoke's not subtle. And for these guys to take these things and make these beautifully layered, complex, fruity, sometimes delicate single malts is really a work of art. Now's the time for our Q&A here at Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast. Greg, what do you have for us today? From Instagram, Mike underscore D2 990 asks, how does the team pick which distilleries they should seek out for a Binny's store pick barrel? I think that we're pretty open to trying any distillery and willing to pick any distillery, and we've picked a lot from tiny, tiny little craft to Jack Daniel's. It's going to be a function of the quality. We will solicit samples from anybody that's willing to give us samples. At the end of the day, our name is going on that bottle, and we want to make sure we're getting something that represents the highest quality, but we always want to make sure we're faithful to the brand itself. We're not doing anybody any good picking a Buffalo Trace that tastes nothing like Buffalo Trace. We don't have any preconceived ideas about certain distilleries. If we're tasting through a whole host of different single malt scotches, we're not going to pick one just based on its name. We're really just going for the highest quality that we can get. We're looking for the best whiskey. If a distillery has a cast of whiskey, they want to sell as a single cast program to a retailer. We're always open to it, but we're also not afraid of having a tough conversation with somebody and telling them when it might not be up to our standards. I have seen you guys turn down an entire round of samples just because none of them stood up to the standard. From a prominent distillery. Prominent distilleries, in front of the head of the distillery. And the other control factor we do is outside of knowing vaguely what... We know we're having a 10-year-old bourbon from ex-bourbon distillery. Everything else we do is blind. So for instance, we'll receive Knob Creek samples is a great example. We've received anywhere from 9-year-old to 14-year-old all in the same set of range. So rather than look at anything, we'd literally go by the reference number first, pick what we want to pick and then do the reveal afterwards. Yep. Cool. Tasting blind. The best way to taste. So, I mean, the answer is anybody if the stuff's good enough. Yep. And there you go. At MikeD2990. That's 20 bucks worth of question for you. Everybody else can write us at Binny's Bev on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, email us, comments at binnys.com. To get the Whiskey Hotline, email spirits at binnys.com. Ladies and gentlemen, thanks so much for listening to another episode of Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast that wraps up Islay, part two. It's been great. It's been peaty. It's been fruity. It's been savory. And it's been smoky and we loved it all. So thanks so much for listening. I'm Kristin. I'm Pat. I'm Brett. I'm Joe. I'm Greg. Keep tasting. The distillery made even more famous by one Ron Swanson, Lagavulin. That Swanson fella also makes some good dinners. That is getting cut. I just want you to know that that is not going to make the finished product. If I give a shot. This is a beautiful bottle.