Taste Guide: “unpeated” Kilchoman
Kilchoman has only worked with unpeated malt from the farm’s own barley very sporadically over the years; a somewhat larger batch (75 casks) was produced in the late summer of 2012 when the kiln needed to peat the malt broke down. Bottlings of unpeated Kilchoman whisky are therefore very rare, with the first two released in early 2020 and only a dozen or so other bottlings matured in both Oloroso sherry hogsheads and bourbon barrels have been released to date.
Despite the use of unpeated malt, all of the bottlings released to date have a slight hint of peat smoke. This is due to the fact that the “low wines and feints receiver” from which the spirit still is filled was not elaborately emptied in between the alternating distillation runs with peated malt, which is why Kilchoman usually uses the term “unpeated” in inverted commas. In the USA, some of these bottlings were labelled as “slightly peated”, with two US releases not even stating the fact that they were produced from unpeated malt so as not to confuse customers with the peat smoke flavour of an “unpeated” whisky.
It is only thanks to the new and separately operated 2nd pair of stills, which were commissioned in 2019, that Kilchoman now has the opportunity to produce genuine unpeated whisky in the future, but also to experiment with more heavily peated malt, etc.
“We only filled a handful of casks with unpeated 100% Islay spirit over the past 15 years and it was always going to be fascinating how they developed differently from the usually peated malt. Although faint notes of peated spirit from the previous sprit runs can be found in the whisky, it is overridden on the palate with strong spice, bold fruits and coastal flavours” Anthony Wills, Kilchoman Founder and Master Distiller.
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