Caol Ila 1998

A very special release exclusive to some of our most faithful Italian customers, from a particularly fine cask of Caol Ila. Sixteen years of maturation in traditional American oak casks have gifted this lovely distillate a very rich and rounded body, erasing all edges and making it robust but smooth. As it often happens with the best examples from this distillery, it’s a whisky that lets the spirit speak, a spirit which is particularly straightforward and chiselled in its uncompromising Islay approach. The result is a textbook example of overwhelming peat smoke intensity and coastal character: tar, charcoal, ashes, a whiff of iodine. A growing and almost explosive experience in peat, backed (but not tamed) by the elegant sweetness of the malt and of the oak.