How do you know that your local single malt whisky market is healthy? That it’s growing and developing nicely? There are a few key factors to gauge this: breadth of brands and expressions on the shelves, also seeing on the shelves special and limited editions (beyond the core range offers) on a regular basis, market exclusive bottlings and eventually growth in the local independent bottlers segment.

Of the latter, we’ve seen offers from Goren’s Whisky, Holy Dram and now Vintage Whisky.

Vintage Whisky are the importers of Cadenhead and Asta Morris and now they are also an Independent bottler with a recently released Caol Ila 13 Year Old single cask whisky.

Hogshead #302307 was filled on March 29th 2006 and bottled on February 21st 2020, yielding 263 bottles at 55.6%

Caol Ila 2006 13 year old (55.6%, 499NIS)

Nose: Maritime bonanza, salty, brine, minerality and sea breeze. Vanilla, honey, hay, lemonade, lemongrass, soft smoke, cured meat and grapefruit juice. Lovely.

Palate: Salty and sweet – really Umami. Peat, antiseptic, smoke, honey, brine, seashore breeze, coal smoke and dustiness, grapefruit, seafood

Finish: medium long finish with peat smoke, dusty, honey, salt, brine and a dash of lemon peel, very more-ish.

Thoughts: A very tasty Caol Ila. I love the combination of peat, medicinal and sweet honey. This is a dangerous whisky – so tasty with rich flavours that you can drink some large size drams despite the strong abv. This one ain’t so cheap with ~128 Euro price tag, but I think it’s good enough to warrant it.