Whisky Dash Pt.2 | 57% ABV

Score: 6/10

**Good Stuff.**
***TL;DR***
*Not quite nailed the recipe, but a fantastic day once again in the Wee Toon.*

Fresh and Tired.

The morning light finds its way into the aft cabin waking me up, bringing with it an unwelcome heat that stacks on top of the already unfavourable conditions, no thanks to a poor night of sleep inside a synthetic sleeping bag with sweaty legs.

I’m not hungover, just exhausted. A long day of driving down to Largs, then sailing across to Campbeltown via Lamlash had me in a low energy state. Our evening prior had played out with Drams on Deck, then a few more down below before turning in for the night. Some fantastic whisky was procured, opened and enjoyed with the sun on our face, the smell of the sea and the squawk of seagulls desperate for our chips.

Some reputationally solid whiskies, bought specifically to restock the boat bar, were opened and deemed batch downgrades. Tobermory 12yo should’ve been a great wee dram alongside the others, but it was sour, sickly and hot. Oh dear.

Determined to have a more extensive look around the Wee Toon, since every year I stick to the main whisky drag of Campbeltown, I got myself up and ready to hit the streets with camera under arm and sun cream liberally applied - factor 50 for a pasty Scotsman. This year I brought with me my “big camera”, which demands a slower approach to everything, due to its medium format sensor and slow processing. Perfect then, for my state of mind.

Since we arrived early Friday, there’s been an ominous, unseen drone of activity from the other side of the marina; a mechanical whine signalling that some serious force is going into something. I assumed it was work to the pier, but walking around the marina the noise is revealed to be a dredger, digging up the bed in the larger commercial harbour, I assume to make it more accessible for boats with bigger drafts.

It’s weird though, because last year we saw the spectacle of the Walmart superyacht perched to refuel itself before setting sail to the tropics, and this year a fairly large tourist ferry was in its place, both with big old drafts. Maybe it’s to get more of them in?

Regardless, it’s a pretty cool operation to watch, as the four-legged dredger retracts its hulking steel legs and repositions itself, driving those legs back into the sandy surface to begin hauling the silt onto a barge, floating nearby.

Visiting Campbeltown from the sea is a fairly unique approach, and as such I have a skewed perspective on where things are located in the town. Alighting from the boat, The Royal Hotel and The Black Sheep Pub are straight ahead, with all whisky related fun to the right of my position. Every year, I leave the marina and turn that way only.

I’ve always wondered what is left of our pitch; the dredger ogling prompts the direction shift and I keep walking that way. I’ve looked along Hall Street many times, but have never walked it. A beautiful Art Nouveau façade hides the last example of an Atmospheric Theatre in Scotland within - an interior designed to feel as if you’re outside. This is Campbeltown’s picture house.

Not far along from this sits the Campbeltown Museum, and one of the most beautiful buildings in Campbeltown, I think. Eminently maritime in appearance, the multi-toned red brick, slate and tin roof leading to a timber hexagon viewing tower painted in pristine white, looks fantastic against the azure of the sky.

I look down Kirk Street and move on, but now looking at Google Maps to find the street names I see that Watt Whisky resides down this long road. Moving forwards into the green triangle of Argyll Street and Steward Road, the architecture becomes grander - a different era of School houses and hospitals.

Toying with the idea of getting some photographs of the locals playing bowls, I check Google Maps to see if there’s a through-passage; not willing to embarrass myself when the locals turn to see some snooper with a giant camera at his face, unable to retreat quickly, when they enquire as to my business. I instead turn around and head down New Quay Street and on to Kilkerran Road.

Everywhere you look in Campbeltown you will see, quite frequently, pagoda embellishments; an echo from the historic whisky past, that bustled with prosperity and noisy production. In comparison today, it feels palpably ghostly. The only sound is the wind and, in the far distance, the dredger. I make my way to the shore along St. John Street and find so much beauty, tranquillity and interest. I can just hear the locals on the bowling green, deftly chucking their bowls towards faraway jacks to a ripple of applause.

Kilkerran Road leads all the way around, almost to Daavar Island, and is lined with some of the most enormous and stately looking houses I’ve seen in a while. Some are hotels, some are private, and all look immaculate. Each one looks out across Campbeltown Loch, Daavar Island and beyond to Arran, with palm trees hinting at the warmer gulfstream climes found on west coast Scotland. I fancy myself living here, especially on a warm, sunny morning like today.

There’s links to the past on each corner, and I start up what used to be the old railway link between Machrihanish Colliery and Campbeltown Harbour, bringing what was purported to be pretty poor quality coal from the mines, going by the tourism signage. The rails are gone now, replaced with a clean strip of tarmac. The path leads to the green flats of the hospital helipad and onwards to the football fields, neither of which I want to see right now.

Making my way back into town, I stumbled upon the giant weathered steel sculpture of cask rings by artist Anna Rhodes: a skeletal x-ray testament to the impact that whisky had, and continues to have, on Campbeltown. Seen from what would be the cask end of the invisible oak, the rings together frame Daavar Island perfectly.

The town, on the whole, looks glorious in the glow of summer sunshine and with Union Flags and Saltires flying it feels lively, but there’s cracks in the picture. Alongside the repainted and repointed, many buildings sit in slumping sadness, others completely shelled. It’s strange seeing so much prosperity in the main streets studded with decay, almost as if Campbeltown doesn’t want to shake off its legacy.

I should add, at this point, that I speak of things I do not fully know, and which can be far more enjoyably discovered through David Stirk’s myriad Campbeltown books, such as his latest Whiskyopolis: The Rise, Fall and Resurgence of Campbeltown’s Whisky Industry.

Turning up Longrow and seeing the now familiar Springbank signage, there’s not a soul to be seen. Saturday morning should, you’d think, be prime whisky exciter time for those shackled to offices through the week, but entering the shop I’m the only person in there. The shop itself has also recently been renovated to make more space for things, but it feels like a negative space when I enter. Not a lot of things take up the newly created space, and the sparsity brings a feeling of recent abandonment.

That’s obviously not the case, given the continued thrill and chase of the Springbank shop. I just picked a very quiet moment to head in there, probably post-rush on account of the cage being entirely devoid of whisky save two Kilkerran bottles of disinterest.

After some awkward chat about the heat, the library quietness in the shop and the feeling of being watched as I took in what was available (mostly Hazelburn, loads of SB12 Cask Strength and some Longrow), I headed back to the boat to rouse Uncle Foosty and get ourselves in the game for our afternoon of blending our very own whisky.

A lunch in the Tasting Room to get our bellies lined, and an amble around to loiter/toast outside the green and gold shopfront until entry time, we watch Campbeltown going about its business. Always look up when you’re in a historic town, because you see some hidden gems, like the stone carved street names etched into buildings, like the one across from the Cadenhead’s Shop, a statement of ownership if ever I saw one: Mafeking Place.

Review

250ml Oloroso, 250ml PX, 200ml Islay Peated, 57% ABV
£100/session - 700ml bottle, blending copita, notebook, pen, fun.

The blending session begins like the two prior, with an introduction into how our afternoon should play out. A guideline on how to approach blending is offered, a limit on what we can and cannot include use in our blends and, once we’re happy, the firing gun is raised.

Before it fires, I once again throw in a spanner - I’d like my bottle to be made out to Dougie Crystal and my avatar used in place of the photograph typically taken on their iPad. Like the last two times, this introduced a technical hurdle of how to get said photographs over to the computer that prints the labels. Eventually, through many misfires and some Adobe InDesign assistance, we get the pictures loaded up and ready to rock, allowing me to get into the blending session.

This year I fancied going down the sweet peat road. Previous years have seen me attempt a “summer” whisky, then an overtly sherried whisky, neither of which featured peat. This year it was time to tickle the monster, and going around the eight options laid before us we have a familiarity with this layout, yet the whiskies feel a bit different.

Where before there was an A and B of sherry provenance, there’s now two different styles. Not sure what they are yet. Same for C and D. It feels like this year they’ve swapped them all around, which is great because last year was the same as 2023 and made it a bit easier to guess what was what.

Quite a few of the whiskies this year I feel are hot - big ABV certainly, but that’s to be expected given these are all cask strength whiskies deemed good components for blending. Water is diligently added, because we only have a finite amount of whisky to play with. I’m gravitating towards F and G this year, because I feel they’re the sweetest, most red whiskies in the line-up. They are also the darkest, and colour does betray what’s in these glasses.

G presents to me more coastal, where F is sweeter. H is of course the peated whisky stuck on the end where most peated whiskies are permitted, so as to not blooter the palate, and typically I stay away from H each year. This year I’m into it. Salty, earthy, but also medicinal. I wonder if this is Islay. I use the supplied syringe to add just a drop or two to my assembled glass of F & G, smelling and tasting very small sips to see how the peat is interacting with the other whiskies.

It’s a hard game to play, especially in such small quantities and with eight whiskies to nose and taste, palate fatigue sets in very quickly and soon everything tastes sort of the same. Add peat to that mix and it becomes increasingly tougher.

However, I feel like I’m getting okay at this, and the past years have afforded me a technique to get efficient at working out what I want to achieve and then giving myself three or four options to consider.

Note taking is essential here as the alcohol takes effect, because it’s easy to forget that you added 1ml to the glass. It might not seem much but scaled up, that is 100ml of something that could throw your entire blend off. As Lorna gets the labels ready, and room chat turns to the pitfalls of modern teaching and parenting vs when Uncle Foosty was a lad, we get serious. It’s time to assemble our blends.

In the end I decided to keep it simple and go with 250ml of F, 250ml of G and 200ml of H. Whilst not a “lick” of peat, the big lump of red sherry sweetness, I hoped, would offset the peaty inclusions. Whiskies now safely inside the main bottle (remarkably without spilling it), an ABV measurement is taken revealing my blend to be a nice round 57%; lots of room to fiddle with at home.

The colour is dark and juicy. Foosty’s is very close in colour to mine, but he’s gone for 200ml of D, 200ml of E, 200ml of F and 100ml of G. All will be revealed on the boat, when we open the golden envelopes of secrecy and see what an arse of us our assumptions made! The bottles are dipped in wax and set aside to get the labels affixed, and we’re shown through the magic bookcase to enjoy our remnants of the eight blending whiskies.

Yesterday, after our Warehouse Tasting Tour when we assembled in the Tasting Room to pick our free dram, Cameron McGeachy, Director of Cadenhead’s, popped into say hello and generously offered us a dram of the latest outturn Ben Nevis - a 25yo full-maturation bourbon hogshead, distilled in 1999 and released on Friday. I asked if we could keep it for after our blending session, and as such we were handed our Glencairns as we sat down.

Alongside the Ben Nevis we each had a dram of something else, with my choice being the Paul John 5yo (again) and Foosty choosing a Glentauchers 17yo Oloroso Cask. Whilst the Paul John once again sang to me, and Foosty liked the concept of the Glentauchers yet not fully buying into it, the Ben Nevis had us both slack jawed. Stunning tropical madness. Uncle Foosty was, not to over-egg the pudding, blown away.

I really liked it, but knowing it was so expensive, decided just to enjoy my time with it before getting down to the brass tacks of deciding if I was going to get the Paul John or not. Foosty went quiet, revelling in the Ben Nevis odyssey of tropical wonderment.

Foosty isn’t swayed by anyone, ever, but I read the room and knew that whisky is fleeting enough that if he had this reaction to the Ben Nevis, he really should buy a bottle. Whisky is life, money is temporary. I played the card: you should get a bottle, I ventured. Foosty saw right through me, baulking at my attempt to have him spend £235 on a single bottle of whisky! Well, I said, suit yourself.

We have a few more drams - a Benrinnes and Tomintoul - before ambling around again to the Cadenhead’s shop to see if we can be persuaded to buy anything else. As we walked around, Foosty is thinking deeply about something, then declares that I’m a bad one. My card has worked, and entering the shop he thwaks the credit card on the desk and asks if he can take one of the Ben Nevis 25yo.

I hide my amazement that Foosty was going for it by focusing on some rum bottles, but I know that he will open and enjoy it hugely, reminding him of our time in Campbeltown and the fun we have together. That’s worth more than the beads of sweat running down his face as he enters his pin number into the card machine.

Looking around the shelves I once again toy with the idea of buying the Paul John but, knowing I need to be careful with my pennies right now, decide uncharacteristically and pragmatically that I have loads of whisky already, and my haul on the boat along with my blended whisky in my bag is more than enough for me this year.

We conclude our trip to the Wee Toon with some pasta and Drams on Deck, once more enjoying the warm setting sun and getting a better night’s sleep as the temperatures fall.

In the morning we set sail for Portavadie, northwards up a very rainy Kilbrannan Sound, arriving in good time to eat tasty burgers and drink refreshing Jarl in the inattentive restaurant, and then conclude our Whisky Dash 2025 the following morning with a fantastic sail down to Largs in the sunshine with nothing but the wind and tide as company. Another fantastic voyage in pursuit of fine whisky.

Back home for quite a while, with work trips, summer holidays, Mini Crystal’s decade on earth and some rest for the liver, the Cadenhead’s Creations Blending Lab Dougie Crystal 2025 Blended Malt is opened.

Did I succeed in the big red juicer with hints of smoke?

Nose

Confectionery - strawberry bites (jelly outer, white soft inner). Salty, mineralic. Sandpaper. Wax candle. Sugary red fruits - jam. Raspberry and blackberry. Cut grass. Bit of pineapple. Bit of tobacco. Permanent marker.

Palate

Runny toffee alongside cedarwood and oak. Red fruits, souring. Quite hot. Permanent marker here too. Mint, not menthol. Tilled earth. Swimming pool changing room.

The Dregs

Whilst it doesn’t blow me off the ground, this isn’t bad whisky by any stretch, which is a relief. It’s juicy, sweet, waxy and has interesting things like cut grass and tobacco on the nose. The palate is a bit hot, but after a few calibrators and a drop or two of water, it tames down to hit a rich, robust “redness” that I gravitate towards. It’s cedarwood with strawberry sauce. I’m pretty chuffed with yet another very drinkable blend!

Where I haven’t managed to excel is the lick of peat. There’s a bit of salt kicking about, but it’s not the balanced smokiness that I had in my mind’s eye. There’s mint, a touch of earth and definitely a plastic tub element to it all, but a “lick of peat”? No, not here, and it surprises me when I look at the recipe again: 500ml of red stuff mixed with 200ml of peaty stuff. The expectation would be quite peated. The peated whisky alone was not shy and knowing just how many infinity bottles I’ve stuffed with a small quantity of peat, to not find an overwhelming peatiness here, is quite something.

I think of things like the Maclean & Bruce 2015 Adelphi bottling that is exquisitely deft in delivering the sweet salty peat effect, and this is absolutely not that, but that was 50/50 peated/unpeated oloroso sherry, so a lot more peat and not a mix of Oloroso and PX.

Overall I think it’s a good whisky, bringing a lot of the elements of whisky that I really enjoy, and I’d be quite happy to share this around proudly, knowing that I managed to make a whisky that is more interesting than other blended whiskies around. I’ll not get into price, because I got a lot more than the £100 would suggest. The experience of blending in the lab, the eight drams to blend with, the chat with Lorna and the Tasting Room afterwards, not to mention the glass, pen, book and certificate and my very own, personalised blended malt.

I’ll be back next year for more fiddling, and I’m already thinking that 2026 will be the year of the weird - use the stuff that I don’t gravitate to and see if I can make something intriguing… what fun!

Score: 6/10

Tried this? Share your thoughts in the comments below. DC

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