Whisk(e)y Wednesday - 2025-04-23

All right... another Wednesday... another Whisk(e)y Wednesday (: I have been saving 2 oz samples from bottles before they are empty, and now have about 30 of these. They are unlabelled other than a 2 letter code that I can then check against an answer key to see what I'm drinking after I have the sample blind. Tonight is the first of these, let's see how this goes.

On the nose I get malt, a light citrus, ash, tar, a touch of sulfur, some iodine and some alcohol burn. The nose is really pleasant, and at this point I'm fairly confident it is a peaty Scotch (likely) or a peaty American Single Malt (less likely).

The taste is sweet, hot spicy pepper, malt, tar and ash. The finish is similar with a sweet syrup finish followed by a hot spicy pepper that lingers and some ash. Really quite good, but if I was to guess this seems a little young in that the finish is not as impressive as the nose or taste. 

Adding water, the nose is sweeter for sure. It still has a bit of the alcohol burn, along with some ash and tire rubber. The taste is sweet as well, and the pepper is more tame - I'm getting some fruit too - most likely from sherry finishing. The finish is still peppery, sweet, syrupy. 

Overall I like this one quite a bit. I'm wondering if it's one of the Ardbeg one-offs I've had lately as there are several samples in the mix. I will give it a 4.25/5.0 ... quite enjoyable tonight, about my only complaint would be that it seems a bit random and not very well balanced.

Turns out it was the Smokehead High Voltage Single Malt Scotch Whisky, Cask Strength coming in at 58.0% ABV from Ian Macleod Distillers. No Age Statement on this one. I originally rated this 4.25, then dropping it down to 4.00 last week during the Peaty Scotch shootout, and now back to 4.25. Looks like I like it (: Cheers!