Douglas Laing Double Barrel Highland Park & Bowmore 10-Year
46% ABV - Islay, Scotland
Nose: Sweet, dried fruits, and light smoke with spices.
Taste: The fruit sweetness develops into richer flavours, and there is a heavy smoked wood – hickory or mesquite – with spices, florals, and saltiness leading into the finish.
Finish: Spices and peat smoke dominate, with light fruits fading first.
Douglas Laing, one of my favourite independent bottlers, marries two single cask whiskies together in order to create some unusual blends for their Double Barrel line. This is a mashup of the most famous Orkney Islands malt, Highland Park, and Bowmore, one of the Islay whiskies. Each component is guaranteed a minimum aging of ten years.
While not terribly complex, this is still a multi-dimensional whisky; it leaves me guessing which distillery flavours are more dominant. Summed up we have a sweeter and more lightly peated whisky, with spices and smoked wood notes. I didn’t see any reviews or tasting notes, so I didn’t know what to expect before I first tasted this. Both of these are "lighter whiskies" in the sense that Bowmore is not heavily peated and Highland Park is not heavily sherried. As a result, I think that neither of these flavours are trying to shout the loudest, and, instead, the peat and the ex-Sherry are both modest and melded together.
I bought this bottle on sight – I had no knowledge of the Double Barrel series and I knew that this would be an interesting one to say the least. And perfect for sharing! I found this whisky in Banff, Alberta roughly halfway through our 2-week camping trip back in 2018. I had not planned on busting through this bottle – the focus was on beer – and so I have only recently opened it.
Tasted 28 December 2019. (Posted 29 December 2019.)
