It is friday morning and a perfect time to start in the weekend.
So lets see what this years bottling brings to us.
Thanks Rick for sharing your bottle. I'm happy to get every year a sample from friends from germany.
Normally you don't open a bottle so quickly after bottling, so lets see if it is drinkable :-)

The smoke is immeditaly present, but not too heavy. Oaky,spicy,old sherried style.
Reminds me on older ''A'' bottlings from the 70's.
On the palate it is a well balanced sherry malt with spicy and old peaches notes. Not too dry but also a complete different style than the new Sherrycask generation.
I don't need water for this one. The abv is pretty well chosen.
I can feel more the dryer Oloroso Cask than the PX, which I like more. Too sweet wouldn't be my taste.So all good for now.
I have to compare this dram to the older ''Crois Chill Daltain'' bottlings. I think I remember a similarity between these bottles.
It paints more and more the picture of Ardi or Laga in my head.
The Chill daltains had more sherry influence and this one is more complex. If I would guess, this one is older and has a much cleaner islay character.
The finish is mid to long. Nothing what disturbs me for now.
Spicy and old school sherry style. From plums,peaches,coffee,chocolate and tropical fruits.
Surprisingly fruity but still different from many islays like Caol Ilas, Bunnas or Laddies.

I will give this one another try tomorrow or maybe on sunday and will add some notes.
For me this years bottling is better like the last years Seagull because it is much cleaner and not overloaded with extreme sherry(even if the Seagull is an old bowmore, but there was not much left of the old bowmore style).
And that is what I love, when I can taste the charakter and decade.
I would guess that the sherry casks used here were good old second fill european oak from the 60's or70's.
I don't know if they have such a good connection to get a old cask like this from ''A'' or ''L'', but if you ask me I would immediatly say it is one of them. Don't expect a modern peated style. It is something different.You have to go back in history to taste some older bottlings.

That is my first impression.
Well done

First Notes for "The English Patient"
This is certainly a complex Islay malt. This has been bottled just a few days ago, so it still needs to settle to show its full potential, a bit shy at first but rewarding if you give it time
It shouldn't be a problem to identify distillery on islay, if you have some islay standard bottling, have them side by side.
I'll come back to this in time to add and refine notes / score

Dear flippers: grow wise, drink and enjoy

First to the bottle.
The 13th Club Bottling of the Regensburg Whisky & Wine Club Slowdrink.
"The english patient", we as Scotch and Malt drinkers / connoisseurs, we don't really know what is happening to the island state and whether / not what the whisky prices do. , , ,
And John Bercow is enthroned on top of everything on the cork and looks uncertainly to the "bottom right".
You don't have to look at everything as seriously as you read it, especially when the bottle says "very basic single malt of low quality".
It is not a simple malt and certainly not of low quality.
Who has the honor to hold this bottle in his hand, respect, did everything right.
It is rumored that the distillate was further refined with even older bottles of the still and then went through the barrel maturation in an Oloroso Sherry Butt, a PX Barrique and a Riesling-TBA barrel.
A long throw at whisky.
But I am very excited to see how it will change in 3-4 months. The drop, like all of Great Britain, is still in "turmoil" after bottling two weeks ago.

And again such an incredibly complex (and yet much more difficult to classify, as my beloved Seagull) ArdLagPhroaig from the Regensburg witches kitchen .... thank you P. for the repeated nose-tongue throat confused ... love it ... geiler shice like that Berlin hipster likes to say. With water, completely different whisky. I'll give the smoky brother a few more months to relax and calm down .... and solidify my opinion that the potential candidate trio will become a duo. Clear case of (very positively meant) WTPhroaig?! .. :-)

Overall, a very successful whisky. Class interplay between sherry, sweet herbs and maritime notes. For 175 € for me definitely a purchase, even if everything was already out of print in the pre-order and bottles are therefore only to have on the secondary market. The question still remains what distillery it is ... It is "A" in the room, but could also be an "L" for me! But since I'm not the biggest Islay specialist, I abstain from a definite opinion :)