Review 241. Kilchoman Loch Gruinart

After a much welcomed summer break,  I find myself once again going through my sample boxes, trying to find something of interest. While there’s no shortage of finding exactly these (interesting whiskies, I mean), I will note that it’s not always a given just picking up a random sample bottle and sharing my thoughts about it with you. Some of these samples have been sitting there for quite a while now, and I do tend to take into consideration whether or not reviewing something from 3 or 4 years  (and sometimes even longer) ago or  a sample  from a very limited outturn is still somewhat relevant as well.  I mean, and you probably know this if you visited these pages regularly,  I’m by no means  ‘averse’ to  straying off the beaten track, talking about the less obvious stuff, even if that means less pageviews. I’ ve never really chased numbers with this blog thing and while I would be lying if I said that numbers don’t matter (I would be thrilled if each week my reviews would get several hundreds  or thousands of views, but I’m not Serge and I’m not Dramface) basically I’ve always  been picking whiskies I think are interesting and fun to talk about and in that regard it doesn’t really bother me whether it’s 40, 200 or 4000 people who pick up on that. I’m just grateful for each visitor and if they even invest to leave a comment underneath or on my socials, you can consider me a very happy blogger.

In any case, this week I went with a distillery that I’m a quite familiar with, but also still a bit on the fence about. Technically Kilchoman might still be considered a ‘new’ distillery as it was established in 2005, but I think to most of us they’re definitely not a novelty anymore. Quite the opposite, most enthusiasts will likely consider Kilchoman to be a household name, as they have released well over a 1000 different expressions (according to whiskybase) over the course of their 21 years of existence. So why am I still on the fence about them? Quite simple, really:  when they get it right (and they often do get it right, I’ll add) what they deliver can be quite brilliant. But! For every bottle I loved, cherished and adored, there was probably also 1 that left me wanting a bit. Not that I’ve ever had a truly bad or unpleasant Kilchoman, but there have been bottles I had high hopes for that didn’t entirely live up to my expectations, like the cask strength Sanaig they did late 2023. And I’m of course well aware that this is likely more on me than it is on them, but at the end of the day I’m now at a point where I tend to apply the try before you buy principle, especially  when it comes to their limited or new releases.

This week’s sample comes courtesy of the generous soul that is Gregoire Sarafian, aka Greg’s whisky guide and you can find his thoughts about this expression here.

Kilchoman Loch Gruinart (2023 release).  American and European Oak casks matured. 46% ABV, NC, UCF, app. €70 -€80

The Loch Gruinart release was initially a French market exclusive, first released in 2020 if I’m not mistaken. A year or 2  ago it suddenly popped up in the British markets as well, as a Marks & Spencer exclusive. On the off chance you don’t know what M&S is: it’s a (multinational) retailer specialising in food, cosmetics, home products and clothing, so in that regard having one of your bottles sitting on their shelves as a store exclusive, is not too shabby a marketing move. Around 2021 Kilchoman sold roughly 300k bottles each year and were looking to jack those sales numbers. Despite M&S closing down quite a bit of their stores post Covid,  having one of your products sitting on every shelf of the remaining 600 stores in the UK alone, probably doesn’t hurt your own brand, if only in terms of visibility and recognisability.

Anyway…

Nose

Ashy and lemony sweetness, vanilla, possibly even some coconut, with a whiff of antiseptic. There are distinctive coastal elements here as well with  notes of iodine, salinity and wet pebbles.

Palate

Sweet and sour on the arrival. Peat and smoke are clear but by no means the be all and end all to this as they are well in check. Again it’s  the ashy note that sticks out. A nice balance of salty and oaky-dry notes, which transcend on to a quite dry, medium mouthfeel which in turn gets countered hy a (shy) sugary-vanilla like sweetness.

Finish

Salty-smoky and peppery.

Final thoughts

The combo of European and American oak suggests some sherry casks were involved here, but I’m really not picking up any of those usual/typical sherry cask notes here. There’s very little (none, in fact) of those stewed/dried fruit notes, no deep/dark notes of plums or raisins… If there were any sherry casks used here, likely they were 2^nd or even 3d fill. I guess the quite pale colour was a bit of a giveaway in that regard. That said, what this offers is a solid Islay single malt which, although nothing extraordinary, and it ticks a lot of the boxes of what makes a decent Islay whisky. The only thing I’m less impressed with, is the price tag of around €70-€80 (£60-£70) which I reckon is  at least a tenner overpriced. Yes I know (smaller) independent companies will always face relatively higher overhead costs compared to the Diageos and Pernod Ricards of the world, and I’m also well aware of how  tariffs and taxes on alcohol are low hanging fruit for any Government (and after yet another increase in the UK recently now make up for quite a significant part of the retail prices), but, and I’m not aiming for just Kilchoman here, ftr (although they still deserve a bit of a slap on the wrist for that €200 bottle of 16 year old they did 2 years ago) with an all but oversaturated market and a whole generation coming of age that seems very wary when it comes to alcohol consumption, something’s got to give sooner or later. We’ve grown accustomed to paying premium prices for high quality whisky, so much so that we’re now also paying all-but-premium prices for whisky that is decent but by no means excellent or exceptional. It simply is unsustainable. I’m not asking for this to be cheap, but if you’re charging €75 or so for a bottle of booze, it’d better deliver. If this particular expression was to retail for €50-€60 it would be both very decent value at a very  fair price, but based on this sample I’m afraid I  really fail to see where the extra €25’s worth is with this one. If you find this one still in that €50-€60 (£45-£53) range, it’s pretty much a no- brainer, but don’t pay over the odds for this one is my advice.