2009 Edradour Ballechin Straight from the Cask 12 Year Old Sherry Cask Matured Cask Strength Single Malt Scotch Whisky (500ml) - 58.1%

Big sherry has become synonymous with the Edradour house style, and we love all of their hugely expressive and quite singular cask strength bottlings. But there’s also an alter ago that has attained a quasi-cult status. When Edradour was bought in 2002, Andrew Symington called on the services of Iain Henderson, the former director of Laphroaig to create a second, very peaty malt. Available since 2006 and employing barley peated at 50ppm - a rate comparable to the smokiest malts of Islay - "Ballechin" was initially sold as a yearly vintage in limited runs of 6000 bottles. There’s now a broader variety available, including private and exclusive bottlings. It's proven itself suited to maturation in a wide range of barrel types, however oloroso is on show in this shipment, and the results are sure to impress.

In cask No. 348, peat and sherry detonate making for a deliciously smoky, high-octane experience that kicks off with powerful aromas of cured meats, menthol rub and lanolin, evolving with notes of dark chocolate, raisin cake, dried orange peel and baking spices. Serious oloroso is matched against even more serious phenols in a fabulously dense, creamy attack, oozing peat-reek and powering on with moist fruit cake, ginger and lemon chutney, finishing with maritime salinity, orange zest and port-soaked tobacco. A blast for smoke-heads that's also in the reach of most wallets, if you love Lagavulin or Laphroaig out of sherry, you may like this even more. 957 bottles from an x-Oloroso cask. 58.1% Alc./Vol. Non-chill filtered.

Other reviews... In the mouth and it was everything the nose promised but turned up to 11. Monstrously rich and relentless. A combo punch to the senses of so many complimentary things - ... Sherry, chocolate and toffee, smoked jams and preserved smoked strawberries, figs, well burnt Christmas cake edges, very dark roasted sweet Turkish coffee, dark tobacco and black pepper, Muscovado sugar, smoked figs, old leather belts, nuts, it just keeps going. There's flecks of salt, and then it builds through the mid palate towards a dark sticky McVitie's Jamaica Ginger Cake moment that more than a few people put their finger on. If you've not had the pleasure of eating one of these beauties then it's to be recommended, it's just as flavour packed as this whisky. The finish is big, warming and full of baking spices, ginger, sherry coffee and nuts. It's a cracker. Any good? Is the Pope Catholic? It might be a wee bit too bombastic for some, but this peated Edradour is solid gold in my book. All of the amazing things that you find in Edradour that has spent its entire life in a sherry cask you find in this along with mountains of farmyard peatiness. I find it impossible not to love. If only they did it in bigger bottles. - whiskybase.com