The Douglas Laing series of Remarkable Regional Malts has essentially established itself as the beginner’s guide to Scotland’s traditional whisky making regions. Each core bottling is a vatting of malts from different distilleries within the region to showcase the hallmark profiles from that area.
Rock Island represents the signature characteristics of the distilleries one islands surrounding the Scottish mainland, namely Islay, Arran, Jura and Orkney.
Building in its core bottling, the series has expanded to demonstrate cask strength expressions, the influences of different cask types, and (as we discover here) the establishment of age statements.
The Rock Island 10yo is therefore a blend of malts from those 4 islands “amongst others”, with each contribution having been aged for a minimum of 10 years.
The final product is a well-presented blended malt at 46% ABV, captured at its natural colour and without chill-filtration. Bottles are currently on sale from Douglas Laing at £50 GBP per 70cl bottle.
Nose
This expression definitely stays on brand with an initial smell of coastal sea spray battered casks. Theres also a gentle peat smoke along with sweeter and fruitier notes of honey, biscuit, and lemon drops.
Taste
A buttery soft arrival coats the tongue and brings a shortbread sweetness and biscuit flavour. With time there are additional notes of lemon curd, soft oak spice and a progressive gently warming alcohol strength and tingle.
Finish
A gentle black pepper fizzes away but leaves behind a lingering sweet lemon and fruit sensation – like pear drop sweets or the lemon and honey lozenges.
Verdict
A really well balanced whisky. This takes the mission brief of combining maritime flavours and sweet fruits to deliver a light and clean whisky that still has a discernible malt base.
I enjoy the regular Rock Island whisky as is, but this seems like a more accomplished and rounded experience of the signature island influences. All of the flavour profiles are there and balanced with an oak cask maturity that – much like The Dude’s rug – really brings the [whisky] together.
As I’m writing this post the regular Rock Island is available around £40 a bottle, whilst this 10yo is at £50 per bottle. If you had the money and were looking at the two, I’d say that you can’t go wrong with the regular expression, but for my money it’s worth the bump in price for that more balanced and rounded feel. More top work from the Douglas Laing team and the Remarkable Regional Malts series.
M
Sample disclosure: The samples used to create this feature were sent directly to Whisky Unplugged by Douglas Laing & Co in response to a previous article posted by us, looking at a compare and contrast of their regular and cask strength releases of the Remarkable Regional Malts’ Speyside brand Scallywag (click here) – and one for their Timorous Beastie permutations (click here). Unfortunately these samples were misplaced as part of a house move, but thankfully they have reappeared to make this post. All notes above are however intended as an honest, fair, and independent review of the whisky, and we wish to thank Douglas Laing & Co for the opportunity.
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