Rock Oyster Blended Malt Draws Upon Scottish Maritime Influences

Editor’s Note: The Whiskey Wash welcomes Mikhail Schilkey to our writing team!

The Scottish island inspired, vatted malt Rock Oyster heralds as the newest installment in Douglas Laing & Co’s recent series of Scotches showcasing individual Scottish regions in all of their empirical glory. Previously, the third generation independent bottler has explored the individual characteristics of the the Highlands, Speyside and Islay, but this latest release focusses its glass off the coast onto the lower yielding islands of Jura, Arran, Orkney—plus a return to Islay—for a playful and light young whisky that’s evocative of the sea.

Douglas Laing’s Rock Oyster comes without added coloring or chill filtration, and along its official flavor profile from the bottler one finds “a maritime and oceanic character of sea-salt, sweet peat, smoke, honey and pepper.”

The diverse flavors can be chalked up, in part, to the individual distillations on the the various islands this blended malt draws from. While in an earlier era, such practice could have been regarded as a flippant disregard for the single malt traditions of a Scotch at this level, here it represents an attempt to capture something akin to terroir, no less concerted than the seascape and pearl on the label.

“Rock Oyster showcases the archetypal Island character of gentle peat-smoke, vanilla’d honey and salt,” managing director and son of the company’s namesake, Fred Laing, said in a statement. “If I could select just one dram to transport the Whisky enthusiast to the Islands of Scotland, it would be this one. Rock Oyster will sit proudly alongside our other core regionally themed Vatted Malts – Big Peat from Islay, Scallywag from Speyside and Timorous Beastie from the Highlands – hopefully contributing to Douglas Laing’s continued growth.”

Douglas Laing’s Rock Oyster clocks in at 46.8% ABV and should run you about $50 at your local upscale spirits emporium—or you can get it online here.