Arran 6 Years Old Original Bourbon Barrel

By Barry Bradford on July 6, 2018 • ( Leave a comment )

Arran 6 Years Old Original Bourbon Barrel – The Octave Project

Category: Island single malt scotch whisky
Origin: Arran distillery
Bottling: A. D. Rattray, The Octave Project
ABV: 59.3%
Cost: £25 for 5 x 3cl

What they say

For this experiment we chose a single Bourbon Barrel from Arran Distillery and divided the matured whisky from inside it between four different Octave casks, retaining one portion of the original whisky for comparison.

Taste the results of our Octave Project with this set of 5x 3cl Little Drams, including a sample from the original Bourbon Barrel and samples from the 4 Octave finishes a PX Sherry, Oloroso Sherry, Rioja and Rum.

What I say

Thanks to A.D. Rattray for sending me this Arran octave project set to review.

Composed of 5 x 3cl drams starting with a sample from the original Bourbon barrel, distilled at Arran and matured for a minimum of 6 years, before cask finishing in 4x different ‘seasoned’ Octave casks a small portion of the original barrel was kept for comparison.

My tasting notes:

Appearance: Champagne gold (3/20), slow fine tears leave fine legs.
Nose: Lemon fresh, dry, honey. linen, toasted flaked almonds and hazelnut, vanilla Danish pastries, sweet vanilla essence, peach melba or lemon flavoured greek yoghurt.
Taste: Fruity; apple, pear, lemon, quite refreshing and juicy, honey, citrus zest, quite light bodied and a little sour, oak wood, cream, spice, very, very light and spirity as you would expect from a cask strength youngster such as this, with water becomes a little more sweet and creamy with melon yoghurt.
Finish: Medium, sour, wood, cream.

Overall

This 6 year old cask strength bourbon-barrel matured Arran is very light bodied with fresh and fruity spirit and hints of wood. A little bit of a ‘ghost’ whisky, i.e. is it really there? Not a huge amount of character, but fairly light and pleasant enough to carry into the octaves for finishing.