Well...


As a space has been discovered in the whisky cupboard. I had a dig around in the spare whisky cupboard and found a bottle of Bruichladdich.

It's a Bere Barley, something that a bit of searching discovered to be the progeny of what's apparently Britain's oldest commercially cultivated barley.

Bere is a six-row barley, as opposed to a 2 row barley, which is more normal for the UK. Six-row barleys do appear in the brewing of American beers, but their use in the UK is somewhat limited and it seems that the total area cultivated for them could be counted in the hundreds of hectares, all in the western isles of Scotland.

The Islay outpost of Bere barley is limited to the one farm, which grows its barley for Bruichladdich. Indeed, other than a 'micro-distillery' tucked away in the Western Isles, the Laddie is the only distillery using Bere barley. 

The slightly analogous thing here is that Bere barley was a staple in Scotland in the Nineteenth Century, suited to the short growing season with its long hours. As yields improved through the Twentieth Century, so other grains gained the ascendance and Bere was banished to the margins, where it clings on supplying a handful of niche producers. 

So: we have a barley that was commonplace 200 year ago but is all but extinct now. What's it like when it's turned into a whisky?

Cards on the table time: it's a difficult one to describe. It's curiously different to virtually everything I've had before. Yes, it's whisky, but there's something that give the impression that it comes from elsewhere, for whatever reason.

At this point, there's a temptation to amble off into some strange soliloquy about whisky as it was two hundred years ago, but I'm going to resist that one as I clearly wasn't around two hundred years ago and as I haven't got a clue what whisky tasted like back then.

Firstly, the nose: barley. Barley of a malty sort and distinctly a cereal. Plantey and slightly bouncy. Perhaps a hint of wine, but something strangely chemically yet not with the usual smokiness that accompanies Islay. Mrs. Van reckons on fresh sawdust and I wouldn't disagree.

The taste: Mrs. Van gets a dry start and then a chocolately aftertaste, but I get more of the barley and a strangely pleasant hint of something chemically. Bananas? Probably not, but there's something there that might have had a liaison with a banana recently. Distinctly barley, if I haven't already mentioned it, a slight sharpness and a strange flightly sensation that haunts the fringes of sensation and then vanishes as quickly as it appeared.

Finish? Difficult one, as the taste is still trying to figure out what's going on. Think of it like the swirling mists of a frosty morning, when the memory is more than actuality. There's not much more there than the taste produced, but it lacks the element of surprise and as the finish lingers, there's an appreciation of what was - and that's a valuable commodity.

Overall, this is a difficult dram to judge, simply because it's unlike anything else. Can a rare strain of barley really make so much difference? Oh yes. This is something from left field, a strange throwback; a journey down a slightly different trouser leg of time. 

Is it one for someone who appreciates a whisky? Perhaps not, because it's so damned odd. Judge this by the standard measures and it fails at several hurdles: it's challenging, it's difficult to get on with and it's... well, it's worryingly different.

But. Put aside the prejudice and the conditioning. Put aside the beliefs of what a good whisky is all about. Put aside the things you've come to like about whisky and about a good Bruichladdich. This is none of them.

What this is is something different. Look at it like that and celebrate it for what it is.

With the changes at Brichladdich, we may never see its like again. Cherish it for what it is.