Bruichladdich 23 1992 Signatory Vintage Un-Chillfiltered Collection

Thanks to /u/Theslicknick6 for pouring me a sample.

More! I demand more Bruichladdich!

I don’t really ever want to be a completionist on Bruichladdich. It was brought up the other day on a whisky discord, and I had to think about it. Part of me would love to point to some aspect of their releases and say “Yeah, I’ve done a bunch of those”. And in some ways, I’ve done that.

But I never want to be a person who does them all. Mostly because I worry that’ll be my death, given they bring out 20 per minute.

Then you get to independently bottled stuff. Sure, for those of you who don’t take chances on IBs, there’s typically a finite amount of whiskies in any “group” to review. There’s a light on the horizon for you nutters who treat whisky like some sort of video game where your lives are your liver. With IBs, it doesn’t end until the booze starts ending.

Which brings me to Bruichladdich 23 1992 Signatory Vintage Un-Chillfiltered Collection. We have one of the rare Bruichladdichs that hasn’t hit a wine cask, isn’t chill-filtered, and has been aged for a decent amount of time. It’s yet another Bruichladdich in a long line of them.

But how does it taste? Because having lots of them doesn’t mean some should squeak by reviewers. So let’s get to it, shall we?

Price: N/A at the LCBO

Region: Islay

Vintage: 21/10/1992

Bottled: 28/03/2016

Age: 23 years old

Cask Number: 3081 & 3097

Cask Type: Hogsheads

Abv: 46%

Colour: 7.5Y 9/6

Nose: Pineapple, white cake, roast corn, brown sugar

Tropical like cereal notes and a roasted element. This is starting out nicely. It’s not weak, though there are some brown sugar/raw notes at the end that concern me.

Bit shy. The lower abv is showing on the nose.

Taste: French toast, coconut, black pepper, pineapple, honey

Alright, some custard/cereal/eggyness first, and some coconut. Nice bourbon notes. Then some burn and rough edges.

This starts nicely, just sneaking up, but seems to sputter as time goes on, like most of my essays.

Finish: Lemon, pineapple, butter, caramel, cereal

And here we see the true downfall of man. Wait, no, just this dram. The true downfall of man is happening in nationalist movements around the world.

Tropical, butter, and caramel. Where once was complexity dissipates at the end, leaving light motes and little else.

Conclusion: A tropical, way too light dram that seems to be working and then doesn’t. Frankly, this is part of my concern with a lot of the Un-chill-filtered collection. It’s older drams at lower abv. that feel like they’ve been mucked about with.

So what is this at the end of the day? Well, it’s a tropical Bruichladdich. It’s an idea of older whisky that, I hope, is inexpensive based on the complexity. It’s something I’d pour someone if they were born in 1992 and wanted to try something from that year, or wanted an older whisky just to try one, or didn’t know too much.

Beyond that it’s a summer dram in a cold winter season that should be more than it is.

At least I’m closer to my achievement levels on Bruichladdich.

77/100

Scotch review #1016, Islay review #267, Whisky Network review #1595