2025 Edition | 50% ABV

Score: 6/10

**Good stuff.**
***TL;DR***
*The nose is a solid 8/10, but the palate doesn't live up to that promise*

Dr Meikle and Mr Tòir

Once again, for the third year running, Meikle Tòir Turbo has left me bamboozled. Once again, I should add, in a very good way.

For entertainment value it is very much worth every penny of its sixty quid. If you can taste a dram, you definitely should. And if you can get hold of a bottle, you should seriously think about it. You might not like it, but the folks you share it with will have their whisky horizons mightily broadened.

Back in the autumn of 2023 I was lucky enough to attend a launch event for Glenallachie's Meikle Tòir range. There, Billy Walker spoke thoughtfully and illuminatingly about the new peated malt, and about the process at the distillery. I was particularly struck by his characterisation of the 160 hour ferments as producing a wash that makes for a very 'benign' distillation. Not that I understood what he meant, but the phrase seemed to crack open a narrow door, revealing a glimpse of how it is that distillers think about their craft. (I'd love to chin him about that if you could swing it Wally...)

Mr Walker then took us through the range of the Original, the Sherry One, and the Chinquapin One. All three of these are heavily peated, with the in-bottle phenol content measured as being 35 PPM. I was very taken by the Chinquapin One - I'm a sucker for a sweet whisky, and the combination of sweetness and smoke always does it for me.

Moving on to the much more limited Turbo, Mr Walker explained that, unlike the other three expressions, for the Meikle Tòir Turbo an extremely low, extremely narrow cut is taken, capturing a range of phenolic, smoky aromas that few other distillers would aim for. The whiskies are then matured for five years, in a combination of American virgin oak and Oloroso hogsheads that contribute a good deal of both colour and flavour. By the time it's bottled, the phenol content in the liquid is 72 PPM. That's what's in your glass, after the losses through fermentation, distilling, and maturation. Bear in mind that a typical heavily peated malt would use barley which, measured at the start of the whisky making process, has a phenol content of around 50 PPM.

Then the drams were distributed around the room, I nosed the Turbo, and was completely baffled. I utterly failed to parse the dram. My notes for that evening are not helpful, and mostly consist of question marks. Honestly, you could have told me I was tasting some wild, juniper smoked, leguminous eau de vie from the Baltic and I'd have believed you.

So a couple of nights later I headed along to the Bon Accord, got myself a Turbo, and sat down with the notebook. I managed a few notes, focused on the familiar aspects of what was in the glass, was starting to recognise things that could plausibly be called whisky, and then....some Barflies turned up, and the evening turned to the best kind of blethering and shared drams.

So a couple of nights after that I returned once again to the Bon - a quiet Monday, no whisky clubs meeting - and sat by myself in a corner and contemplated the Turbo in all its baffling glory. It was beginning to make some sort of olfactory sense. I could see the whisky-ish aspects of the dram, and I could see where it was definitely off the Scotch chart. I was fascinated. Here was a dram I could spend hours figuring out. But by then, in terms of buying a bottle it had vanished "like snaw aff a dyke", and, as I'm far too tight fisted to pay silly auction prices, that was that. Sigh.

I tasted last year's, the 2024 release, twice. On neither occasion, alas, was I able to make any sort of useful notes. I mention this in passing to show that, whilst I am a whisky obsessive, sometimes life just gets in the blooming way. 2024 was hectic. I vaguely recall that I liked it very much.

Thus, this year, I was determined to get a bottle. Spoiler alert, I did! And I barely had to call in any favours. As soon as I did, I cracked it open and shared a dram with some folk. The consensus was that it really, truly, stinks, but in a good way.

Somebody said, when I poured them a dram, "Ah! A whisky for when I'm having a night off the sauce. No need to actually taste it."

Did people actually like it? Hmmn. The response was mixed. I blooming love it. Some folk were, like me, laughing at how outré it is, how entertaining. Others were...polite, but clearly not impressed. Let me try and describe it for you, to see if I can convey something of its delicious weirdness.

Review

Meikle Tòir The Turbo, 5yo, 2025 release, five American virgin oak barrels and four ex-oloroso hogsheads, spirit phenol content 72ppm, 50% ABV
£60 and likely all sold

I know, I know, scoring it like this is kinda cheating, but I honestly don't know what else to do. If you could only smell this whisky, not taste it, you'd still be entertained all evening. I really truly don't know how to rate it. Is a split score even allowed in the Dramface scoring system? What do you do when there is such a dichotomy between nose and palate?

Nose

The neck pour:

Boom! Huge pungent peat wafting across the room. People are laughing about just how pungent it is.

It's stinky - but in a good animalic way. If you've ever been in a byre in December, giving the kine hay and turnip, and it's warm and freezing cold both at once, and the beasts are gently pressing against you, checking for molasses, this whisky reminds me of that. I used to get a ghost of that animalic, agricultural flavour profile in Lagavulin, but once the distillate was Nineties it wasn't there. So yeah, Eighties distilled Laga.

It's also a bit pokey, gently jabbing at my trigeminal nerve. Which could be alcohol - unlikely at 50% - but which reminds me more of menthol or capsaicin (Tyree will, I trust, provide context in the comments). There's carbolic soap, there's cloves, there is most definitely a mezcal note - it's only five years old after all - and then there are a whole load of grassy notes which are more recognisably related to peat. But wow!

Over time it evolves into a decidedly grassy dram which reminds me powerfully of the Kintyre peninsula.

Further down the bottle:

Still stinky, still animalic. The cloves are stronger, and the menthol too (or whatever it is in Scotch which presents as menthol). There's spicy oak as well, sweet and powdery dry. The grass is still there, but now it's more aromatic- more herbal than grassy, neither sage nor rosemary nor thyme, but hinting at all three. And I can see cedar too.

I think it's perhaps getting richer and sweeter on the nose. The earthy aspect of mainland peat is coming clear as the confusing intensity of that 72 PPM becomes more familiar to me. Oh, and there's a bit of smoky soy sauce too.

Palate

Okay, this is where this review gets tricky. The nose is wild, the palate ain't. Don't get me wrong, it is sweet, and sherried, or sherry-like, and smoky, but it's much closer to what you'd find in peated sherry monsters from other distilleries. In terms of the old school Islay South Coast, as I've mentioned above, it's closest to auld Lagavulin. To give you some context for what I mean by that, I'd say that Laphroaig is the medicinal one, iodine and TCP; Ardbeg is the fragrant, woodsmoke one; and Lagavulin is the heavy, spicy one. So yeah, Turbo has weight and spice.

I really like what the casks are contributing here. Sweet baking spices and curry spices. In fact, I should go make a carrot cake but include cumin, coriander, and turmeric alongside the allspice, just in case it turns out like Turbo. Oh man, how tasty would that be? A glass of Turbo with Turbo cake??

With time and a drop of water it's not so much overtly sherry casked, more of a depth and resonance thing. Like the cello, in an orchestra. First violin gets the limelight, gets to take a bow, but the cello is there adding something that maybe doesn't stand in your line of sight, just quietly adding to your enjoyment.

The Dregs

If you go have a read at my review of Holyrood Pitch you'll see I expressed a similar sort of excitement there about the discovery of new aromas and flavours. I think that's a good chunk of why I'm so taken with this whisky. Glenallachie have looked at how Scotch is made and asked, "where can we push the envelope?". And as I've had a bit more time to contemplate it I think I'm starting to get it.

For myself, I love this dram. In the day job I see a lot of whiskies which are very, very close to each other on the flavour spectrum, and yes, I know I should judge each on its merits, but, ehhhhhh, the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak or something. Or, I'm a jaded old whisky cynic. Whatever it is, I am still most decidedly a neophile. And that is precisely why I'm excited about the Turbo. It's pushing the boundaries, in an industry that has, for whatever reason, decided that it should define itself as traditional.

But, to return to the dilemma which headed this review, how on earth to score the whisky?

I can't help but feel that the difference between the nose and palate is just too great to give it the 8/10 I want to. It's a poor analogy, but sometimes with slightly-too-old fine wine, the nose is enthralling and the palate is a wispy ghost, and it's just not as good as it could have been, even though it smells amazing. Of course the Turbo is full bodied and powerful on the palate, but however big it tastes, it’s nowhere near as big as the nose.

So, reluctantly, it's a very entertaining - nay, exciting - 6/10.

Probably.

Score: 6/10

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

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