2021 vs. 2022 | 55.1% & 56.6% ABV
Score: 8/10
Something special.
TL;DR
Something decent, followed by something great
“And the damage is…”
“If you expect nothing, you’ll never be disappointed,” the saying goes.
There are lots of spheres of life where this approach pays off: sharing the road with lunatic drivers, my mother-in-law’s cooking, or the perpetually scatter-brained friend who can never manage to make a night out even after suggesting it himself. Yet, these are expectations I have of others, not expectations I hold for myself. This distinction is key to how expectations in whisky continue to raise us up, befuddle us, and sometimes come crashing down on our earnestly eager heads.
The trouble is that the expectations we have in whisky are often more about us than about others. As Ogilvie discussed recently, each of our whisky journeys are woven through with expectations. We build up bottles in our eagerly anticipating brains to levels that defy anything approaching common sense. FOMO is one manifestation in whisky of failed expectation management. I see that the Next Best Bottle has just been released, and my mind, nose, and taste buds form a boisterous conga line coaxing me to join, merrily and unthinkingly guiding me to shell out some hard-earned money for it. This sometimes happens with a distillery I’ve yet to try, but more often it’s from a distillery I know and have enjoyed bottles from before. It’s the worst with distilleries that are in the handful of what I’d call my favourites.
Bunnahabhain is one of those favourites. From the first time I tried the standard and excellent 12 year old early in my journey to now, I’ve enjoyed everything I’ve bought or tried from them. And so it was back in late 2021 that the olfactory conga line led me to happily fork over a not-insignificant pile of cash for the inaugural 12 year old Cask Strength edition. I didn’t try it beforehand, and I didn’t attempt to try it.
Of course it would be great… why waste time trying to find it in a pub when it was selling out quickly? I was anticipating everything I love about the standard 46% 12 year old but amped up to 11: the toffee/caramel, dried fruits, sea saltiness, light fruits, all enveloped by that lovely sherried surround. I expected – nay, I knew – that it would be fantastic.
I got it home, popped the cork, had a sip, and it was… okay. It was good, but it wasn’t the 12 I was expecting. The conga line wasn’t nearly as fun as it seemed. It had some identifiable Bunnahabhain elements, but if I had it blind, I definitely wouldn’t have pegged it as the amped-up cask strength version of my beloved 12yo. At first I wondered if my palate was off. But as I kept coming back to it I realised my palate was fine, but my FOMO and expectations were not. Would I have spent almost £80 for it if I’d tried it first? I’m not sure.
Fast forward to late 2022 and the 2021 edition has been slowly nursed over the course of the previous 12 months. Then, the 2022 12 year old cask strength edition appeared on my radar. The conga line started up again. But this time, like an old cranky school teacher, I shut off the lights and killed the party before it started. As former president and noted Mark Twain-esque orator extraordinaire George W. Bush once said: “Fool me once, shame on you… fool me... you can’t get fooled again.” Amen, Mr. President. I, too, wasn’t going to get fooled again. I wasn’t going to shell out another £80 for this new edition. Definitely not. Probably not. Highly unlikely.
But those conga freaks wouldn’t pipe down. The weeks went by and it was still available. The music got louder. I sipped my standard 46% 12 and wondered: “What if this year’s is better?” I then heard a few trusted voices give the 2022 edition some high praise and that coaxed me to join the line.
I caved. What started as a ripple of scepticism became a wave of FOMO expectation that came crashing down on me. I picked up the bottle at my local shop and as I went to pay, the salesperson playfully said: “The damage is £78.” Normally I would have trotted out a well-worn reply such as: “The damage is done, all right!” but this time, given the tension between my scepticism, trepidation, and expectations colliding together, it set off a wave of internal paranoid panic. Were they half-joking but half-serious? Had the salesperson already tried it and found it to be as disappointing as last year’s? Were they trying to tell me this was actually damage because the whisky wasn’t worth what I was handing over? Damage? Didn’t they know what a precarious state I was in?
Not much about cask make-up is still available online about the 2021 version, but we can safely assume a majority of sherry casks were at work. For the 2022 version, the distillery website states the whisky was matured in “mainly first and second fill oloroso sherry casks with a small percentage of bourbon casks.”
I got it home, popped the cork, had a sip, and…
Review 1/2
Bunnahabhain 12yo Cask Strength 2021 Release, 55.1% ABV
£80, sold out
Score: 6/10
Good stuff.
TL;DR
Not what many expected
Nose
Some punchy spice at this strength, the sherry influence is of course prominent, plus toffee and cinnamon. But there’s also a chalkiness punching through the sherry, which might some it might come across as oakiness to someone else. To me, it’s not present in the standard 12 year old.
Palate
Nice oily texture and mouthfeel. The chalkiness or oak on the nose carries through to the palate. It’s not off-putting, but it’s quite prominent and not something I recognise in the standard 12 and therefore unexpected. Light chocolate notes alongside warming sherry and dried toasted nuts. Ever so slight saltiness. Nice, but not the big brother of the standard 12.
Score: 6/10 DD
Review 2/2
Bunnahabhain 12yo Cask Strength 2022 Release, 56.6% ABV
£80, still available
Score: 8/10
Something Special
TL;DR
What the 2021 release should have been
Nose
Wonderfully sherried dried fruits, chocolate boozy raisins, cinnamon, and a waft of coastal quality. The chalkiness (or oakiness) of the 2021 is completely absent here.
Palate
Lovely sweet, spicy sherry continuing from the nose along with chocolate raisins, caramel/toffee, saltiness, coastal pebbles, slight bitter orange peel, and dried nuts. Slightly perfumed and floral. Rich and wonderfully oily. Long sticky-sweet finish.
Score: 8/10 DD
The Dregs
The 2021 is good, but the 2022 is great. If you bought the 2021 edition and were disappointed, the 2022 is what you were hoping for. It’s what I was. It’s very close to the standard 12 dialled up. If you place drams of the 2021 and the 2022 next to the standard 46% 12 year old, right away you’ll group the 2022 and the standard 12 Glencairns together with the 2021 as the outlier.
The 2021 is not a bad whisky. Its only problem was me and my expectations for it. When I sip the 2021 on its own, it’s a good whisky. But sipped alongside these other Bunnas, it’s missing some of that crucial Bunna character that the other two have in droves. Try before you buy if you can. But, if you avoided the 2022 edition because, like me, you felt a little burned by the 2021 edition, I would wager that you’d probably enjoy the 2022 thoroughly. Will I buy the 2023 edition? I’m not sure. If the 2023 sticks around as long as the 2022 seems to be, I’ll probably have a chance to try before I buy. But I can hear those conga tunes in the distance.
Tried this? Share your thoughts in the comments below. DD
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