Ledaig Rioja Cask Finish

A delightfully pink-hued peated non age statement from the Tobermory distillery, it rightly reflects the wonderfully coloured houses of the town where the (awful) kids TV show Balamory is based. Don’t watch it. Even though I was the target audience back in the early 2000s… I knew it was bad.

The first and as far as I am aware, the only bottle in the Sinclair series, this red wine finished expression has certainly spread through whisky fans. So lets crack on and see what this slapper thinks.

Experience

Starting at the top, lets pop this cork and give it the praise it deserves. In my view fancy corks are really understated. They are a functional feature and also make great fridge magnets when your done. Shout out to Deanston for also breaking the dull cork mould.

I know many people chuck the boxes instantly and there is a wider environmental debate around their use in the Whisky world. Yet I have to say, this box is just fantastic and one that I held on to, until the lack of floorspace demanded its trip to the recycling box. The really stunning design of a ship relating to the story behind this bottle but as always, I won’t bore you with the details.

As mentioned above the colour of this liquid is a beautiful reddish gold with a hefty tint of pink mixing in there. A poorly mixed tequila sunrise in a Whisky bottle. Now from an in depth 2 minutes of Googling I still cannot confirm or deny the use of caramel colouring but you wouldn’t mess with this… right?

The bottle also passes the two bonus points: it is shelf friendly and boy does it slap!

Nose

The first waft comes with a wonderful whack. Sweetness of thick berries and ripe red fruits bolstered by the mildly aromatic campfire smoke.

The heavy rich fruit slightly leans to the dirty cheap red wine aromas with a tinge of artificial chemicals mixing together. Luckily this is just dancing on the periphery of the snout with the other more peasants notes taking control.

I can confirm the powerful peat that softly lies below the fruit become resurrected to life over time. After leaving the glass to sit for a few hours, it invaded the entire kitchen with the most glorious sweetened peat.

Taste

High hopes always leads to being let down. The first sip was a disappointingly thin texture akin to any supermarket 40% release. It took a few slurps for the 46% abv to come out to play.

Imagine the most delicate and marzipan laden fruit cake with little sugar flowers on top. Then chuck that into the dirtiest meat fat drenched barbeque. So yeah… quite nice.

As the drink goes on, more notes start to boil to the surface: Raspberry jam, salty brine and a slight nail polish lick at the back.

It all ends with a very Bowmore style, burnt cabbage note.

Value for Money

Not really knowing much about this bottle, I dived in picking it up at £28 using the Bezo Subscribe and Save special. A real bargain from the bad bald bloke.

Now it seems to be between £32 – £35 with the cheapest, at time of writing, being Master of Malt.

I would say any point up to £35, it is a fantastic bottle at the price and shows how well NAS bottles can prove their worth.