Octomore OBA: Concept Review

That’s right! YEAH! Octomore Black Art!! It’s here and my review is below.

I missed out on the release as the website crashed for a good 30 hours as everyone was trying to get on to buy one of these. I was tempted after everything settled down and they still had some left but I’m meant to be on a freeze at the moment anyway. Normally that would really have stopped me anyway but it was pretty expensive at £90 f
or a 500ml bottle.

Anyway, I was working at Whisky Birmingham on Saturday and they guys on the stand next to me were pretty awesome and turns out they run a whisky blog called Living Room Whisky. I then noticed that Mike and Jon had a sample of the new Octomore I had missed out on and they offered to let me try some and in exchange they tried some of the whisky I had brought along.

Many thanks go to both of them for this awesome whisky!

Octomore OBA/C_0.1 59.7%

Colour: Amber

Body: Full

Nose: More of a PC, sulphurous smoke, Sherry, black cherry. Actually, it very much reminds me of a less sulphurous PC12. There’s a dark fruitiness but the sulphur is in balance and is entwined with the smoke.

Water: More sweetness, more cherry, orange. Slightly floral after a minute, opens up.

Taste: Intense, sulphur, Sherry, Cherry, black smoke, dirty bonfire. Builds. There’s a dirtiness to this I haven’t really had with other whiskies. It goes past earthiness.

Water: Softer, goddamn awesome, really builds beautifully with cherry, bright orange, lovely oils and sulphurous smoke. Brighter and more building and balanced

Finish: Long length. Back to sweetness with a kind of ashy, dirty, like literally dirt, digging around in the garden, glacé cherry.

Water: Awesome, epic. Seriously great finish with water

Oct at the top of its game, really good. Just about tops the 7.3 According to Adam Hannett, the youngest whisky is from 2007 but I think it was bottled earlier than the release?

87/100

Thanks for reading!

Review #338

Network Average: 74.5

Best Score: 92

Worst Score: 44

0-49 Terrible

50-59 Bad

60-64 Just About OK

65-69 Ok to Good

70-74 Good

75-79 Very Good

80-84 Excellent

85-89 Superb

90+ Magnificent

Full Disclosure Disclaimer: I currently work as a Brand Ambassador for Penderyn Distillery. The views expressed here are purely my own and do not reflect the views of Penderyn Distillery or The Welsh Whisky Company. I try to maintain as much objectivity as I can but feel free to take my reviews with as big a pinch of salt as you like. Furthermore, I have never accepted free samples from anyone in the whisky industry, but have bought bottles or samples with my money, bringing a different set of biases. Also, my rating scale is NOT based on a Parker type wine scoring scale or a school/college/university % or A-F grade score. I apologise for any seemly low or 'bad' scores given with my system and am sorry I can't say only nice things. Please keep in mind that I am ethically compromised and am unable to produce 100% unbiased reviews.