Since I was not feeling well earlier this week and diverted back into Scotch had some of the old standards; Glenlivet 12, Glenfarclas 105 (which is 120 pf not 105...), a batch 36 Aberlour A'bunadh and the one that sent the evening weird, a first release "Laddie" 10.
That one is an un-peated Islay. But this time it had a distinct taste of band-aid plastic, which is one of the common phenol's you get with a peated Scotch. I'd not touched this bottle in 10 years at least, so interesting what a bit of air and some time do. There is a lot in common with whisky and perfume and how a tiny bit of something can become very prominent in smell or flavor. My guess there is the barrels were not in a separate warehouse from their peated offerings or the smoke from peating on the premises affected it.
I decided to compare it to the only other un-peated Islay; Bunnahabhain. Here I ran into an annoyance I only seem to experience with Scotch and Tequila, a rotted cork. Fortunately it had not "corked" the contents and just broke off at the top. Reason 999 to keep some old clean bottles on hand, preferably screw tops. A corkscrew, funnel and coffee filter at hand allowed me to transfer the contents to the clean bottle. I got the loose cork and residue out of the original bottle and cleaned it out and am letting it dry so can put the contents back along with a silicone stopper.
As to the taste, this had none of that phenol as they don't have peated offerings like Bruichladdich does. I found this all interesting hopefully someone else does as well.