Port Charlotte 10 Year Old is a single malt Scotch produced by Bruichladdich in Islay, Scotland. It is aged in 1st and 2nd fill American whiskey barrels and 2nd fill French wine casks. This whisky is bottled at 100 proof and has a suggested retail price of $65.
If this was, say, a tenner less then you’d be hard-pushed to find a better-value peated whisky on the planet, but it’s certainly up there with the Ardbeg 10 and Lagavulin 16 – and way beyond anything that the eminently forgettable Laphroaig is putting out at the entry-level range.
Port Charlotte 10 is a lovely whiskyand, like many of Bruichladdich’s core whiskies, a startlingly good value. It’s dense, compact, and focused, with a distinctive charred sort of smokiness. I found it rather closed neat, but delicious with a bit of water.
It is peated to 40ppm, in line with other Islay heavy-hitters, but the peat is never a blunt instrument, retaining sufficient restraint to allow other characteristics—maritime notes, the sweetness of caramel, coconut, and orchard fruits—to shine through.
Bruichladdich Port Charlotte 10 Year is a fantastic Scotch that I’ve relished drinking, but it still leaves me a little conflicted. On one hand, it’s a beautifully sweet, fruity, floral, and delicate Scotch that harnesses peat as a complementary feature and not the burly star of the show.
A whisky that I will never apart from my bar. It is a sublime example of how easy drinkable a heavily peated whisky can be. With its price around $60, it comes at an attainable budget.
