The Balvenie Peat Week 14 - Review
Age: 14 years
Barrel type: ex-bourbon barrels
Region: Speyside
ABV: 48.3% ABV
Price: $75-100
Additional details: Non-chill filtered, natural color
This year, The Balvenie debuted an experiment nearly 15 years in the making. Back in the fall of 2002, the distillery decided to devote one week a year to peating their malt. In 2002, the chosen week was the 37th week of the year, September 9 - September 15. From that little supply, which then aged for 14 years in American oak barrels, The Balvenie created this scotch. Going forward, Peat Week will be an annual limited release from the distillery. In fact, this bottle even identifies the "peat week" for the years 2002 through 2014, so true connoisseurs will be able to wait for some editions that may be aged a little longer before their release.
Appearance: The Balvenie's tins and bottles are some of the best in the business, and I absolutely love both here. They are overloaded with information in that Edwardian-Victorian style. I couldn't even summarize all of the material here, but there is some fascinating insight into The Balvenie's process. The side of the tin even includes a graphic of the organic composition of the peat in the Scottish Highlands compared to Islay, which accounts for some of the difference in flavor. According to the graphic, almost 50% of Islay peat consists of phenol, which produces a medicinal character, while the Highlands feature a much larger share of non-phenolic, earthy, peat. The two have roughly equal shares of "guaiacol" peat, which produces sweet and spicy notes. That contrast in composition makes sense in light of the different flavors that the two types of peat produce. I love the fact that this bottle gives information that even experienced scotch drinkers would not know, but which we would find valuable. In other words, it's not just all marketing speak like the typical liquor bottle.
The label provides the following tasting notes for this scotch: "Gentle sweet peat smoke on the nose with some lighter floral notes and delicate butterscotch honey. Velvety and round to taste with the peat smoke balancing citrus flavors, oaky vanilla and blossom honey. The finish has gentle smoke with a lingering and creamy vanilla sweetness."
In the glass, Peat Week has an earthy tone, almost as if a bit of silt got into a glass of light-colored Highland malt. Ochre might be the best descriptor. It looks lovely.
Nose: Don't expect anything close to the Islay punch coming from this whisky, even if Balvenie refers to it as "heavily peated." The initial notes are all sweet: frosting sugar, the quintessential Balvenie vanilla, and apple. Without the sherry or rum-cask finishing that adds some darker fruit notes to DoubleWood or Caribbean Cask 14, the overarching impression that I have is that this whisky is surprisingly light and airy. But then the peat brings us down to earth, right down to the level of the grass and glacial till. It's a well-balanced, albeit at times insubstantial, nose and a fine exemplar of the Highland peated style.
Palate: The palate and nose are consistent, rather than having surprising or dissimilar flavors, which I often find to be the case with Balvenie's whiskies. Those powerful vanilla and apple aromas are wafting off the glass because that's what you're about to taste. The cereal, malt sweetness also expresses itself here, and again that earthy, terrestrial peat tethers the palate and prevents it from being too thin. Some spiced honey threads in and out of the experience. I'm very glad that the distillery chose to bottle this at an above-average 96 proof. At 40 or 43%, where many special editions come in, this would taste too watery. As it is, it verges on watery at times. It's an easy-drinking peated whisky, perhaps the easiest I've sampled.
Finish: Most peated whiskies, even ones that aren't smoky at first, get a little ashy or smoky at the end. Not so of The Balvenie Peat Week. Balvenie's base distillate produces something that's akin to the white wine of single malts, and the finish has those characteristics. It's mildly drying, and once more the dominant flavors are apple and vanilla frosting. There is peat here, but not at a level that I'd consider heavily peated. The smoke manifests as a kind of toasted coconut. Who knows -- perhaps I've blasted my taste buds with too much cask-strength Laphroaig, Ardbeg, or Lagavulin recently, but what I consider heavily peated is a high bar at this point.
Value for Money and Final Impressions: The Balvenie is priced as a premium brand in the U.S., although the fact that they largely stick to age-statement single malts means that they are providing a respectable value in the contemporary market. For example, DoubleWood 12 is a great and fairly priced introduction to Highland-Speyside single malts. We picked up this bottle in London from Master of Malt, and so ended up paying something like $75 for the bottle with free shipping. In the U.S., this bottle is going for closer to $100, which is a heavy ask for a 14-year old peated single malt. That being said, it is an annual limited release, so this isn't a bottle that one can expect to find at any time of year or in any liquor store. And it is the very first heavily peated expression from The Balvenie in most people's living memory (the distillery says that this is the first heavily peated whisky they've released in more than 50 years). I was happy with what we paid in light of the circumstances, but I might not pony up the same price for the n-th release of this scotch.
Rating: B+