The last time out I introduced this relatively new bottler The Islay Boys.  The backstory being I found this bottle going cheap around the same time as the company announced a crowd funding exercise to expand into distilling Whisky and Rum.

With the chatting out of the way the important work begins of tasting the first products which were released in 2017 and won a Silver IWSC in the same year. Which as I write reminds me to begin an article on judging competitions in the whisky space….

So with that mental note taken to begin another writing task its own with the show

The Dram

The first interesting point is all the FlatNose products are available in 50cl and 70cl bottles. Both bottles have the same shape just one is larger than the other. Off the top of my head I cannot recall any other bottler which does this in those two sizes. Perhaps someone better than me can correct me but is this unique to Islay Boys?

Regardless, the whisky itself is bottled with natural colour and no chill filtering which is standard practice to cut costs and add premiumisation which as I have said many times already is a happy union between penny counters and brand consultants. We do get an extra 3% of alcohol over the legal minimum as well to help give a lift to the whisky.

Other than that though there is not much to say about this combination of grain and malt whiskies other than I guess some of it must come from Islay although there is no requirement for their to be I suppose.

Tasting Notes

Colour – Quite light but definitely yellow and not orange

Nose – Black peppers and tart cooking apples which comes from quite a sharp spirit experience. Once you get over that there is pear drop fruity esters and the icing sugar sweetness.

Palate – The texture is great and holds onto the pepper notes and bags of boiled fruit sweet. Things aren’t all sweetness and honey though the palate holds a drop of peated whisky which adds a murky earth undertone which lurks in the shadows of the profile.

Finish – The texture on the palate was good but the finish is pretty short. There is a lot of sharp spirit again with just a after taste of charring

Final Thoughts

I struggle with a lot of blended whisky and while a lot of people seem to like grain whisky I am not really one of them. If I am honest I don’t think I have tried any single grain’s I have completely enjoyed.

With all that said though I notice I keep coming back to this one and for £20 a bottle I think its a great value product. It puts similar priced big name brands in the shade and just shows what you can do if you trim the profit margin a little and focus on the quality of blending over the next massive advertising campaign.