Bunnahabhain 6yo Peated SMoS
Single Malts of Scotland Small Batch | 48% ABV
Score: 6/10
Good stuff.
TL;DR
Young, simple, but elemental
Shelter from the storm
When I was five years old, my childhood home was struck by lightning – an experience that is, to this day, still with me.
Picture the scene: a sandstone cottage stands alone at the end of a country lane. It’s the summer of 1986; the end of a sweltering hot day that has ripened into an evening heavy with the weight of an impending storm. My parents have friends over for dinner and I’m upstairs, enacting a takeover of Castle Greyskull with my beloved He-Man figures.
Opposite my bedroom window, cows huddle under the dark trees of the woods that flank the edge of the field, their hot, sweet breath mingling with the warm, clammy air. Rooks gather and wait. The rain starts to come down in steady, determined, heavy droplets. Thunder splits the air like an axe splitting kindling.
Before long, the rain has intensified, drilling into the dry, baked dirt, sending up clouds of dust that look like smoke. It sounds like the earth is sizzling. Downstairs, my parents pour more wine and people laugh. I go to my window and peer out at the inky black sky, the curtain of grey-silver rain that pummels the lane in front of the house. The air is electric and tinged purple. You can almost hear it crackling.
Suddenly, the power snaps off. Downstairs, a record on my dad’s jukebox grinds to a stop as the machine runs out of juice. Over the clamour, I can hear my mum telling my dad to check the fuse box, my dad asking for a torch, my Aunty Morag saying that it’s getting late and that it’s time that they were heading off anyway.
The storm is right above us now, and people are nervous. My parents’ German Shepherd that was previously at the foot of my bed, its ears pricked and alert, is now sitting at the window, whining pensively. I let go of the curtain and turn back to my He-Man figures, which have been plunged into darkness. The sky lights up like a flashbulb. A vein of bright white lightning finds the chimney of the house.
This is how I imagine the events of that evening playing out. I was five years old, and memory is a slippery mistress, so I’d be lying if I said that I can remember every detail. What I know are the facts: my parents had guests over, there was a storm, the power went out, the chimney was struck by lightning, the house shuddered and several windows shattered, the roof of the house caught fire and the chimney pot came down.
Ten minutes later, the lane outside my bedroom window was full of blue flashing lights and my dad was muttering stuff about insurance.
Thankfully, nobody was hurt. The fire was put out, the roof was eventually replaced, and the chimney pot was glued back together and used as a planter (it still sits in my parents’ garden, a reminder of that fateful evening, all those years ago). What it left me with, though – other than a good story to tell – was a visceral fear of lightning that still lives with me to this day.
The chance of being struck and killed by lightning is 1 in 1.9 million. That sounds pretty slim, until you consider that the chances of winning just £50,000 on the UK lottery is even slimmer, at 1 in 2.5 million.
Many people play the lottery, believing that one day, they’ll win more than £50,000. Ergo, if you can convince yourself that one day you’ll win at least fifty grand on the lottery, then it’s not unreasonable to think that there’s a fair chance you might one day be struck by a bolt of lightning.
Still, the chances are slight, and I acknowledge that. They’re especially slim if you’ve already had a close encounter with lightning, which I have. Statistically, my house is probably safer than most houses, because the chance of living in two houses that are struck by lightning are surely even slimmer than the chance of your house being struck once. Logically, then, I know that I shouldn’t worry about it.
The problem is that it doesn’t work like that. Because fear doesn’t respect logic. Neither does it respect facts or statistics. Fear is visceral; it lives in your gut, not your brain. Just as I knew, as a ten year old, that Freddy Krueger wasn’t real, I also know that my house isn’t going to get struck by lightning every time there’s a storm. Unlike my fear of Freddy Krueger, my fear of lightning hasn’t abated with age though. Hence, every time there is a thunderstorm, I return to that place of worry.
I’m choosing the word ‘worry’ rather than ‘panic’ because I don’t want to overstate things. My fear of lightning doesn’t amount to a phobia. I don’t go into hysterics whenever there’s a lightning storm, like my mum does when she catches sight of a mouse. Rather, lightning unsettles me. I feel it in my bones that I’m not safe. I become anxious, the same way that animals do. It’s a primal thing that I’m pretty certain will be with me for the rest of my life.
And why wouldn’t it be? Lightning is, after all, a terrifying phenomenon. It seeks a way to get to ground, be that via a church spire, a telephone wire, a lone tree or an isolated cottage on the outskirts of a village. If you watch a slow-motion capture of a lightning bolt, you will see that it doesn’t just travel down from the sky; it also travels up from the earth. The earth literally generates a bolt of electricity. It looks supernatural.
It’s hardly surprising, then, that the Tudors who built my parents’ 15th century cottage, deprived as they were of science, would have attributed lightning storms to witchcraft. To my mind, they were right to be frightened of it. In fact, the only reason that most people aren’t frightened of lightning is because they believe – correctly – that they’re very unlikely to be struck by it. They still play the lottery, though, and believe that they may one day win big, despite the chances being significantly less.
By now, you’re probably wondering what this has to do with whisky, and I’ll tell you: here in the UK, we’ve been enjoying something of a heatwave recently, and after four or five days of wall-to-wall sunshine a couple of weeks ago, there was a huge lightning storm.
I live in a very urban area now, so the chances of my house being struck are even slimmer still, but even so, whenever there’s a storm, I still take precautions.
Unlike my parents, who still live in the same house, and who are understandably more paranoid about lightning than most people, I don’t switch the electricity off and go and sit in the car. I do, however, make sure that I’m wearing rubber soled shoes and that I’m downstairs. I’m not sure how much of a difference either of these things would make to my chances of survival, were the house to actually get hit, but after a lifetime of taking such precautions, I’m not about to abandon them.
This particular storm occurred at around 2am. After fetching my daughter from her attic room at the top of the house and putting her in our bed, I decided to get up and wait it out with the dog. Finding myself downstairs in the middle of night, whilst Mrs Mackay and the kids were fast asleep and none the wiser to the celestial pandemonium that was playing outside, I decided to try and distract myself with a bit of TV.
Then, I remembered something. Whisky.
The ultimate distraction.
Review
Bunnahabhain 6yo, Small Batch Series, 2018, Peated, 48% ABV
£60 paid, still available
The whisky that I opened that night is a 6yo Bunnahabhain that I picked up from a place called Decanter Spirits in Leamington Spa. I have no affiliation to Decanter Spirits whatsoever, but if you’re over that way, then it’s worth a visit. Although the whisky selection isn’t huge, they do have some interesting bottles and the staff are both friendly and knowledgeable.
What I didn’t know, when I bought this whisky, was that it was heavily peated. This isn’t a problem, but I have to say I wasn’t expecting it. Most of the independently bottled peated Bunnahabhain that I’ve encountered has been bottled under the Stoisha moniker, so I figured that this one would be non-peated.
Whilst peated whisky is rarely my first choice nowadays, I do still enjoy it. What’s more, in the middle of a thunderstorm, it felt quite fitting. It’s rough and elemental, after all, so in some ways, the choice to crack this one open felt a bit fortuitous.
Score: 6/10
Good stuff.
TL;DR
Young, simple, but elemental
Nose
The nose confirms what the colour of this whisky already suggested – that this has been matured in ex-bourbon. There’s plenty of vanilla here, along with some cream soda and some Highland toffee. The smoke is ashy, rather than industrial, and I also get a little lemon. There’s also some new leather, and a touch of shoe polish.
It’s not complex and it is arguably a bit generic, but it’s enticing nonetheless.
Palate
This is one of those whiskies where the nose pretty much tells the story of the palate. The vanilla, Highland toffee and cream soda are all here in abundance, along with a bit of icing sugar. That lemon note that I picked up is also present on the palate, only this time it comes in the form of cloudy lemonade. There’s also some apple, and a touch of cider. With time in the glass and a bit of water, a nice soapy note emerges as well.
The Dregs
This is not a complex whisky, but it is engaging. At 48% there’s plenty of vibrancy to it as well.
It’s also very clean, and whilst it can take a bit of water, it doesn’t need it. In fact, that’s one of the most striking things about this whisky – how easy on the palate it is. Normally, when I think of 6yo peated whisky, I think of something fairly spirit driven and maybe a little jagged around the edges. Whilst this one definitely plays like a young whisky, it’s not sharp or harsh in any way.
My only slight criticism is that it’s perhaps a little bit generic. Were you to hand it to me blind, I’d struggle to tell you which distillery it came from. And okay, so I’d hazard a guess that it was an Islay whisky, but other than that, I’d be pretty stumped. It’s basically exactly what you’d expect from young, peated whisky – smoke, lemon, vanilla, toffee. Nothing wrong with it at all, but it all adds up to something that, whilst being very well put together, isn’t particularly distinctive.
Even so, sipping it alone at 2am, the wind rattling the sash windows as the lightning flickered outside, it felt like a solid companion. In fact, I enjoyed it so much that, by the time the cork went back on the bottle, I’d polished off three or four glasses of it.
I’d be lying if I said that this whisky had cured me of my deep-rooted fear of thunder and lightning, because it hasn’t. That said, it did provide me with a welcome new distraction from future storms.
Score: 6/10
Tried this? Share your thoughts in the comments below. FMc
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At the point of this article’s publication, Bunnahabhain currently sits in position #5 in the Dramface Top 40.
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