We have been fortunate enough to feature a fair few posts on this site about the Douglas Laing & Co Remarkable Regional Malts series – click here for more. The range of blended malt whiskies look to celebrate each of the traditional whisky making regions of Scotland.
Having started out with a single core release for each region – each bottling with its own name, brand, and stylings linked to the region itself – the series has grown to feature different expressions and explorations of what each region has to offer.
Rock Island brings together malt whiskies from Arran, Islay, Jura, and Orkney “amongst others” [ed: so… Skye??] and here we have a 21yo expression, i.e. each constituent malt is at least 21 years old, making for a well matured entry to the family.
As with the other Douglas Lain releases, this whisky is presented at its natural color and without chill-filtration. Bottled at 46.8% ABV, there were 4,200 bottles made available at a price of around £80 GBP, with very few remaining at the time of writing!
Nose
A viscous oily peat smells arrives first and foremost. It’s a dense Islay peat too with the scents of tarred ropes, rich campfire smoke, and sea salt battered casks. A slight reprieve with sweeter notes of salted caramel and lemon.
Taste
A very oily texture arrives on the tongue with a sharp blast of citrus. Lemon tart? Lemon fool? Lemon cheesecake? It’s lemon and baking spices for sure. Then it’s all joined by an earthy and sweet peat smoke veering toward the TCP note you’d associate with Ardbeg or Laphroaig.
Finish
As the oak spice sizzles away, I’ve been left with the flavours of lemon biscuits and campfire embers.
Verdict
Rich, oily, flavourful, and a lot more Islay influenced than I was expecting!
Given that the Remarkable Regional Malts has “Big Peat” as its Islay-only blended malt, I wasn’t expecting this Rock Island release to have such a strong Islay characteristic about it. We know that the longer a whisky spends in a cask, then the more its original peaty characteristics can fade in favour of those from its oak surroundings.
That’s not to say that the other islands don’t feature peat in their whiskies. Jura has a touch of peat in its recipe bank. The Isle of Arran distillers have an entirely different brand and offering of Lagg whiskies, which feature heavily peated spirit. And not all Islay whiskies are peated, for that matter. In fact, it seems to be becoming increasingly more common for a distillery to have both unpeated and peated expressions these days.
Ramblings about peat aside, this was a rich and tasty whisky in its own right with the stronger peated notes being offset with some lighter, sweeter, and citrusy notes. Also: £80 for a 21yo is almost unheard of these days! Bargain.
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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