Port Ellen 1969 Gordon & MacPhail for Donini 63.1%

Port Ellen 1969 Gordon & MacPhail for Donini 63.1%

Unequivocally superb. A massive Port Ellen of monumental power, no matter how you define the word.  I recall this was my favourite in a head to head between this, the Celtic labels 64.7% and 62.2%, and I am now reminded why. The coal is raw and tectonic, and gushing with hot tar, and sludgy black oils. Prepare to be buffeted by impenetrable black smoke rising from a burning mountain of organic material, fresh as well as composted. It is a rare whisky that combines volcanic power and electric directness, and yet brings it all home with the breadth of these grizzly dirty oily peat and earth notes, a monochrome rainbow of greys and blacks. Can the salt flats burn? if they could add half the gentian of Switzerland, and myrtle forests, and we might end up with something close, interwoven with dried lemon slices (burnt), aromatic resinous sap, a menthol and clove balm, hot and raw, on a bed of white ash. Indisputable top tier Port Ellen. 95 pts