Bruichladdich Micro-Provenance Single Cask #2651 'Whisky.de exclusive' 14 Years - Whisky Review

Welcome to whisky.com where fine spirits meet. Today we have a bottle which is exclusive to whisky.de so it's not available somewhere else. Unfortunately we do not deliver to every place in the world. This is a Bruichlerich Micro Provenance single cask number 2651. It's 14 years of age. It's distilled in 2010 and bottled in 2025. It's 55.8 abv and costs a price of 148 euros and 50 cents here in central europe. It's uncolored, unchill filtered and it might be a few euros more in your particular country due to alcohol taxes. Bruichlerich is a company which in very old times was part of the Jim Beam operations. Then it was sold to a group of individuals which brought the distillery up and running and then it was sold for close to 100 million US dollars. In that time there had been a lot of different bottlings, cast experiments and after the sale of this distillery to I think it's Rémy Cointreau and then the amount of different bottles reduced a lot because that big company wasn't able to have a hundred SKUs in their portfolio. It wasn't possible at all so they reduced the number of bottles and with the time customers asked and wanted to have more different bottlings and so they provided now these Micro Provenance single casks. It's a single cask, just a single cask. It's a first fill ex bourbon cask and the outcome, the outturn had been 229 bottles. It was distilled on the 1st of October 2010 and was bottled on March 31st 2025 and there is a marking about the barley type. It's publican oxbridge barley. So this is all we know. We know that Bruichladdich is producing unpeated whiskey, unsmoky whiskey and well keeps track of the barley. They have a lot of local barley they use and well the rest we have to figure out. Very good cork, fruity, very fruity. So it's 14 years of age in a first fill ex bourbon barrel. That means there is a lot of potential for vanilla, caramel and all those aromas coming from ex bourbon casks, particularly first fill ex bourbon casks and Bruichladdich has relatively small stills where intense whiskey is produced and the local barley and the focus on barley leads to a more fruity spirit or raw whiskey which then matures in those casks. Yeah it's very full, very intense and be careful it's 55.8 so i do have to add water later on. There's a fruity note in it. It's not that fresh green apple style, not that citrus notes. It's a little bit sweeter, more juicy, orange instead of citrus, pears instead of apples and barley all over, vanilla, not so much caramel. Yeah and there's this cooling alcohol note in it, therefore you have to dilute it a little bit just to come down below 50. Here we go, marks on the glass, yeah more vanilla and a little caramel, starting oakiness, 14 years from a fresh cask, well delivers oak, a little spiciness. It's a gentle, pleasant, fruity note, just massive, full, yeah more oakiness, light tannins showing through, still too much alcohol in it. That had been 50 I think. Yeah turning a little bit cloudy, that's until filtered. If you dilute the substances show through and show a little haziness. Yeah a lot friendlier now, not that intense, not that pressing on your tongue. Gentle, friendly, a little bit of oiliness and a friendly, elegant, light spicy aftertaste coming from the oak. Yeah so this one is quite balanced from the nose over the taste to the aftertaste. It's not a whiskey delivering more in the end or more in the beginning, no it's just elegant all over. And the cask is present, even being only an American ex-bourbon cask, first fill, and no sherry cask, wine cask, rum cask in it. It's an original whiskey from Islay which shows the style behind all those smokiness because it's not smoky at all. Yeah now more intensity on the nose, you have swallowed it, now the brain says you have swallowed it, you're still living, it might be good. There had been a professor experimenting with these effects in Germany, I think it was in Dresden, that everything you swallowed tasted in the second time better than the first time. If you spit it out your brain says it hadn't been good, therefore always taste twice. So this is an exclusive for whiskey.de. There are other micro provenance single casks out on the market, they will be different because every cask is its own, has its individual place of maturation, cask type, wood species, all is oak but grown on the north slope, grown on the south slope, so difference and difference between cask and cask. That's it for today, catch you next time!