Advent Calendar Day 7: The Balvenie 14 Year Old - The Week of Peat

Balvenie distillery is a Speyside single malt Scotch whisky distillery in Dufftown, Scotland, owned by William Grant & Sons. One week a year Balvenie turns their production to making a limited run peated whisky. According to Balvenie's website, this practice started after distillery manager Ian Millar visited Islay. He ordered a batch of Speyside peat for the kiln and built a peat burner on the side ‘for, well, extra peatiness’ with the intent to experiment with their The Balvenie profile.

Due to the strong influence of peat, they separate the remaining low wines and feints, basically low-alcohol spirit, and store them in a tank until the following year’s peat week, so there is a year-to-year link between one peat week and the next.

It is bottled at 48.3% ABV. Other than that... I don't seem able to find any details about the maturation, coloring, or possible chill filtration process. Balvenie dedicated a lot of time to crafting a web page to highlight the history behind the making of this bottle, but they offer very little details on the bottle itself beyond their tasting notes.

Regardless, I was excited to try this. I've never had anything from Balvenie before, and I've recently become more interested in Speysides. I've only tried a handful of Speysides so far (the bulk of my whisky experience is focused on Islay so far), but my impressions so far have been very favorable. None of those have been peated, so this seemed like a win-win.

Nose: Canadian bacon, lemon, brown sugar

Palate: smoke, peat, vanilla, chili, apple juice

Finish: lingering burn and sweetness.

Notes: This was very disappointing. It lacks complexity, it’s a bit too sweet, and the peat and sweet that dominate aren’t even well integrated. It doesn’t taste actively bad, but I’m just not finding anything positive about this. Of all the whisky I've tried in the past couple of years, I can honestly say that I enjoyed this one least of all.

Score: 3.5/10

Scoring guide

0 - Undrinkable

1 - Awful

2 - Bad

3 - Flawed

4 - Below Average

5 - Average / Mediocre

6 - Above Average / Decent

7 - Good; a solid choice

8 - Great; I'd happily drink this any day

9 - Excellent; for truly special occasions

10 - Mythical/perfect