70 cl; 48.4% ABV / 96.8 proof; 12,000 bottles produced; bottled in 2016; unpeated; American oak and premium wine casks; retails for $290-ish in England, $350-ish in the USA.
Burnished cherry wood; Exquisite beading, and supermodel legs. I heretofore dub them Karlie Kloss material.
One of the better noses Ive sniffy-sniff-sniffed in a long while. Its dark, all right. Betwitching, and complex. Double-double, toil and trouble
baby coconut jelly mingles smoothly with the essence of dried fruits like fig, date, and apricot. But theres more
desiccated fruits resurrect themselves as living spirits, freshly plucked in a blanket of dew, from tree or bush.
Plum, orange, raspberry, and champagne grape can be detected. In addition, Herbes de Provence, vanilla bean, oak ester, dark chocolate, and brown sugar rear their pretty heads. Let me catch my breath. Wow. Just fantastic. These non-fruit scents all hang back patiently, like supporting actors, to make the 5.1 a virtuoso performance.
Im initially reminded of the old Black Box, higher ABV Highland Park 25 Year Old, which I dearly miss. But this whisky before me is even more rough. Black Art, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways: 1. Delightfully bitter oak tannin from European premium wine casks. 2. fruity confection of delight (peach, nectarine, Manila mango, lemon zest). 3. Sappy-sweet American oak. 4. Island heath honeycomb. 5. Marshmallow nougat. 6. Bakers coconut. 7. Grass sap (in a good way). 8. Clover blossom.
I tip my top hat in the general direction of Mr. Hannet’s office on Islay. He’s outdone himself with Bruichladdich Black Art 5.1. I like it better than some of the other Black Arts that I’ve tasted over the past year at whisky parties, although I must confess that I cannot produce any tasting notes or scores to verify that gut instinct.rnrnAs for whether or not you, Dear Reader, will feel the same, that all depends. If you seek out wine-forward experiments . . . well, then this whisky could disappoint. It’s far more conservative in its profile than past releases.rnrnFor example, Black Art 4.1 contained far more experimental wine characteristics–front and center. Plus, it was less predictable, and yet far more mercurial. In past Black Art releases, Jim McEwan somehow got the wine and the malt to compliment each other, more or less. Well, okay, truth be told, the combination worked better in some versions better than in others.rnrnNow, I am no whisky purist when it comes to decadent, wine-laden cask woods. I do enjoy the unpredictability that can produce excellence through a mixture of knowledge, experience, and serendipity. But I also recognize a great dram when I taste it, even without all of the “high strangeness” that figured a bit more prominently into Jim McEwan’s version of The Craft.rnrnAs for my take on this new edition, I hold the broth in high esteem–even though I’m not a big fan of pentagrams, at least as they pertain to Saturnian thus-and-such. If you buy a bottle for upwards of three hundred bones, and then end up not liking the stuff, well . . . carpe noctem. To every man, an ego . . . and to every ego, an opinion.rnrnAfter all, it’s not as if I lack experience tasting and writing about heavy weights in the world of single malts. Not long ago, I was shoving my nose into generous pours of Glenfarclas 40 Year Old, Highland Park 40 Year old, and Glenglassaugh 40 Year Old.
