Our remote Feis Ile 2025, today at Caol Ila


May 26, 2025

Our remote Feis Ile 2025, today at Caol Ila, including our 900th

We have plenty of Caol Ila to sample, but on this occasion, we’ll only have a few — just enough to mark our 900th CI in style.

Caol Ila 2013 (43%, Signatory Vintage, Very Cloudy, La Maison du Whisky, Navigate World Whisky, two hogsheads, 710 bottles)

Not quite sure when this baby was bottled, we’ll mention it as soon as we find out. This rather amusing series is usually bottled at 40% vol, but here we are at 43. Colour: white wine. Nose: textbook linseed oil, seawater, crabs and prawns, seaweed and mentholated smoke. Nothing to quibble about, it’s precise and very charming. Mouth: soft and rounded for a Caol Ila, but how we do enjoy those extra 3%! It’s like acacia honey smoked over fir and beechwood, to which one might have added a splash of lemon juice, a touch of oyster brine and bits of smoked salmon (with beechwood again, naturally). Finish: lovely length, excellent freshness, and above all these distinctly coastal notes. The smoked honey makes a welcome comeback in the aftertaste. Comments: very fine bottle for South Africa.
SGP:556 - 87 points.

Caol Ila 9 yo 2014/2023 (59.9%, The Whisky Exchange, Seasons: Spring, first-fill bourbon barrel, cask #831)

Supposed to be ‘refreshing’, though at nearly 60%, one had better tread carefully, no? Colour: white wine. Nose: a touch of sunflower oil laced with iodine tincture and green apple juice, clearly calling for a dash of water. With water: there, we’re greeted by a fresh, fruity, fairly easy-going Caol Ila, faintly medicinal, very pleasant, with bandages and embrocations. The only situation where bandages are actually enjoyable, ha. Mouth (neat): extremely powerful, very oily, concentrated, truth be told a tad aggressive. With water: everything softens, even drifts towards something a little sweet. A whiff of white tequila, quince and green pear. Then it grows ever more saline. Finish: long, taut, very pretty, no fuss. Comments: here’s one that did the job perfectly but do ready your pipette.
SGP:556 – 85 points.

Caol Ila ‘Smoking Sherry’ (55.5, The Cooper’s Choice, oloroso sherry butt finish, vat #233, 762 bottles, 2021)

No vintage stated, so presumably a multi-vintage batch. Colour: dark red amber. Nose: this works a treat, orange marmalade and currants holding a smoky peat conference, resulting in one of the finest cough syrups I know. Figs in the background, leather, pipe tobacco, liquorice allsorts… With water: a few soapy notes appear; the saponification is fairly pronounced here. Paraffin, polish, modelling clay… Mouth (neat): pure polish mingled with honey, salt and tar. It’s not uncommon, though not guaranteed, that oloroso should dance quite so gracefully with big peat. With water: pepper, tobacco, triple sec, old white wine, olives, pickled samphire… Finish: long, very much in continuity. Lovely green pepper. Comments: a slightly enigmatic composition, but it worked a charm, just as expected.
SGP:566 - 87 points.

Let’s head to the other extreme for our 899th CI…

Caol Ila 11 yo 2013/2025 (56.6%, Lady of the Glen, refill hogshead, cask #319952, 123 bottles)

Word has it this hoggie was leaking, which the bottle count seems to confirm, so let’s see what came of it. Colour: white wine. Nose: perhaps a touch softer and more civilised, though that could just be the mind playing tricks. Blind, you wouldn’t have shouted ‘ah, a leaking cask!’ Classic mercurochrome, iodine, lemon and green apple, seawater, shellfish, seaweed… With water: plasticine and clams. Mouth (neat): a textbook Caol Ila, rounded and lemony, not complex at this stage but utterly charming in its smoky, taut salinity. You get the idea. With water: water performs miracles here, ushering in a flood of seafood, seaweed, lemon and a drop of Tabasco. Finish: long, with our old friends sardines and anchovies in brine turning up, while the aftertaste is loaded with peppered lemon. Comments: it loves water. Toss it into the pool during the Paris Olympics and it would’ve nabbed a gold medal. Superb CI, well done Hannah W.M. But does this mean we should start prioritising leaky casks?
SGP:566 - 88 points.

Right, it’s time to choose our 900th… I suggest we go with an older version, okay?

Caol Ila 15 yo 1980 (40%, Sestante, +/-1995)

The 15yo Caol Ilas from Sestante in the 1980s are often sought after, especially when drawn from pre-1974 distillate—but that’s not the case here. What is certain, though, is that at 40% vol and after thirty years in bottle, it’ll need some substance to hold up. Colour: straw. Nose: it whispers rather than shouts, but it’s elegant; off we go with rose petals, dried orange peel, Sicilian pistachio syrup, night cream from Dior (or whatever), and those tiny flat oysters you find at the ends of the earth. I mean the Finisterre. The peat has likely been fully digested. Mouth: wait, it still has plenty to say—naturally saline and resinous, with hints of ink, furniture polish, curious shellfish (cockles, razors), a slightly petrolic side along with something faintly cardboardy, and a soft, resinous brine. Finish: not eternal of course, but it keeps spinning tales. It reminds us that in 1980, times were hard in Scotland and on Islay... Comments: this really is like an old white wine, to be honest.
SGP:454 - 90 points.

Might as well have our 901st to wrap things up…

Caol Ila 21 yo 1974/1996 (43%, Dunn Eideann, Signatory Vintage for Donato, Italy)

Caol Ila 21 yo 1974/1996 (43%, Dunn Eideann, Signatory Vintage for Donato, Italy)
This baby was distilled on 27 December 1974, smack between Christmas and New Year. You could imagine that, owing to the holiday lull, fermentation times might’ve stretched a little—say, three good days from the 23rd to the 27th—but that’s pure speculation, of course. At any rate, this was already from the ‘new’ Caol Ila, just built or rebuilt. Colour: Sylvaner white. Ha. Nose: smoked rhubarb, cider apples, crème de menthe, aniseed, genepy and seaweed, plus a wee sachet of Gummi Bears. Incredibly precise, razor-sharp, unstoppable. Mouth: a quick note that not all 1974s were glorious—some bottlings were quite debatable. That said, here we have very nice purity, almonds, marzipan, sesame oil, and what one might fairly call a salty peat… Finish: medium length, touches of boot polish, apple, lemon and seawater. It trails off a little, shall we say… Comments: the nose is superb, the palate very lovely though perhaps a touch imprecise and, above all, extremely salty. But after all these years, who really minds? Still, I find the Sestante superior, if you ask me.
SGP:455 - 85 points.

(Gracias a bunch, Aaron and Boris)

Check the index of all Caol Ila we've tasted so far