Fifty Tastes of Whisky: Poit Dhubh 21

Welcome to the first installation of the new Fifty Tastes of Whisky series. If you haven't already seen the series introduction, feel free to check it out over here. After a little bit of consideration, I have decided that this inaugural whisky retrospect will about my latest acquisition: Poit Dhubh 21.

Poit Dhubh is Scots Gaelic for Black/Illicit Still

Lets start with one of the first things I noticed about this whisky: the name. Unless you know Scots Gaelic, don't even bother with attempting the pronunciation on your own. According to the literature on the packaging, Poit Dhubh is pronounced very much like "potch ghoo". My understanding is that this translates literally to black pot, which simply means still (or perhaps illicit still). All of my commentary about pronunciation should be taken with a grain of salt -- while I did spend a bit of time researching this, I am not a Gaelic speaker, and even if I were, you should remember that there are often-times regional differences in how people speak the same language (you know - dialects), so I am sure you would have Gaelic speakers that disagree amongst each other. Having said that, I don't think the pronunciation is quite as simple as described on the bottle, because we don't have many of the Gaelic sounds in English.

So let us go ahead and break it down to see if we can get a better pronunciation than the over-simplified "potch goo". There is really nothing special about the leading p in Poit -- it sounds just like in English. The oi sitting in the middle of Poit should likely be similar to the sound you get from law. So far, so good; but this is where it starts to get interesting -- the label suggests that there is a tch sound at the end of the word, but from everything I read, it should be more of a regular t sound preceded with a very slight kh-sounding breath. Here is a link to an MP3 of a native speaker saying "Croit Bheinn" so you can hear the oi and t sounds together (notice there is no tch sound, but rather a much more subtle kht sound). The dh at at the beginning of Dhubh is a little more subtle than an English speaker would use when saying "ghoo" -- it is more like the gh version of ch as heard in loch or Bach, perhaps almost like the sound you would make when gargling (but you know, without the actual gargling). The middle u is pretty straight forward, in that it sounds pretty close to the oo in food or who. The trailing bh is a little misleading -- in Gaelic, this usually sounds like an English v, but it becomes silent at the end of a word (in most cases). Here is a link to an MP3 of a native speaker saying "Creag Dhubh" so you can hear exactly how Dhubh is pronounced (notice how soft that gh sound really is).

Makers of Poit Dhubh: Pràban na Linne, The Gaelic Whiskies

Gaelic for "the small illicit still by the Sound of Sleat", Pràban na Linne operates The Gaelic Whiskies, and was founded at Isleornsay, Isle of Skye in 1976 by Sir Iain Noble, a Scots Gaelic language enthusiast who also happened to be responsible for the introduction of Gaelic road signs in Scotland. The photo above is one of the nicest photos I have seen of The Gaelic Whiskies property (if you prefer Google Maps Street View, you can find it here). On the same property, you will find Hotel Eilean Iarmain (also developed by Noble). It should be noted that The Gaelic Whiskies is not a distillery, but rather an independent bottler -- from what I can tell, their whiskies are distilled, blended, and bottled in Edinburgh (if anyone knows with certainty, please let us know in the comments). The Gaelic Whiskies claims to be the first to market non-chill filtered whiskies, a process that was used by the Gaels since they started making whisky (though think I remember reading that Poit Dhubh was supposedly chill filtered up until 1993).

Back in 2005, they had planned to open their own distillery in nearby Teangue, and were to produce a new single malt named Torabhaig. Public details are sparse, but I assume that this project fell through after Iain Noble's death in 2010. More recently in 2014, the Hearld Scotland published a story describing revived plans of building the Torabhaig Distillery, with an expected start of operation in 2015. According to a passage in another article dated June 2106, completion of the Torabhaig Distillery is now expected in 2017.

Impressions of Poit Dhubh 21

I guess this is the part that most people are interested in: Is Poit Dhubh 21 a good whisky, or not? Shall I ruin the surprise for you? Heck, why not. If you can find a bottle, grab it. If you are in the market for a quality blend, I seriously doubt you will be disappointed. I have shared this with several friends already, and everyone was very pleased with it. Most of you who have gotten this far already know this, but blended malts with an age statement indicate the youngest single malt in the blend. I am not sure which single malts make up Poit Dhubh 21 -- not only is uncommon for blend recipes to be shared, it is also against EU law and the Scotch Whisky Association to make any age statements other than for the youngest alcoholic component (interesting side note: Compass Box was in hot water over this in the past year or two).

Bottling: 43% A.B.V. No indication of batch number or date. Likely bottled in 2015 or 2016.
Colour: Rich amber. Slight haze. The legs are quite slow and thick.
Nose: Sherry; plenty of sweetness -- dried fruit and honey; oak; light peat and smoke/ash; floral and earthy tones; light citrus zest.
Taste: Sherry and sweetness; oak; spice and pepper; hints of fresh tobacco; licorice
Finish: Peppery oak followed by sweeter notes, and finally a touch of smokiness and perhaps dried tobacco.

Remarks: While I quite enjoy this blend, be careful with how much water you add, because it lightens up very easily.

Cheers!