Caol Ila 16 yo 1991/2007 Cask Strength (Smoke on the water, fire in the sky)

Yes, I admit I bought this particular whisky because it won an award. The Malt Maniacs named it Best Whisky Matured Exclusively In Bourbon Casks - Daily Drams category in their 2007 awards. It also got a silver medal. I can assure you that while the award sounds trite, it really isn't. There are many bottlers and distilleries around, and they entered more than a hundred of the best whiskies for the MM awards, so anything that survived to take a medal is more than worth it.

I was at a loss initially as to what to pair it with, as I've not done smoky whiskies yet. Martine Nouet, a Malt Maniac and a contributing writer to various whisky industry magazines and publications, suggests root vegetable soups as potential accompaniments to smoky whiskies, but I'm not very good at making root vegetable soups. Like many, I'm a better glutton than a cook. Anyhow, I ordered pizza in one night, and decided that proper stone-baked pizza could well go with a smoky whisky. And here we are.

Caol Ila 16 yo 1991/2007 Cask Strength (The Single Malts of Scotland)
Single malt - Islay
White wine
57.5% ABV

Nose: Smoke and peat. Soya sauce, honey and lemon. Fresh-cut grass lurking around the edges. Mouthfeel: Medium body. Gritty and sandy, quite rough in the mouth. Can't really taste all that alcohol (!).
Tasting: Salty and sweet. Preserved Moroccan lemons. Cinnamon and cloves. More grass, drier this time (hay?).
Finish: Salty, long and warm. The cloves and honey linger longest.

Oof. Very yummy, but it's strong. So, for good whisky, you need good pizza, and I've tried to choose the best I know of. I don't normally eat this well, but it would be a shame to waste the whisky by testing it against Pizza Hut stuff, for example (hmm... or would it?).

1. Siracusa pizza from Lupa.

Lupa is a delivery-only pizzeria that serves up great pizza to those who live near West Hampstead or Crouch End. The ingredients are top notch, with the trade off being that the pizza is a little smaller, but the crust is thin, crispy and baked to perfection in a wood-fired oven. Their Siracusa has Italian sausage, Lupa's caramelised onions (brown, sweet and tangy with balsamic vinegar), roasted peppers, tomato and mozzarella. The Caol Ila added a smoky, lemony tang to everything, somehow made the caramelised onions seem sweeter, more in harmony with the tomato sauce. It even brought out the bready flavours from the crust!

2. Capricciosa pizza from L'Artista.
L'Artista is a Golders Green Neapolitan restaurant that does wood-fired pizza and wholesome hearty pastas. I chose a capriciossa, which has prosciutto, red and yellow peppers, anchovies, tomato sauce, mozzarella and an egg on top. The Caol Ila made the salty anchovies taste a bit like smoked herring, and there was a lemony tang to both the fish and egg that was quite interesting. The peppers were already blackened by the oven, and the smoke in the whisky made them taste a little sweeter. Nice, but the egg was a little too raw to go well with the whisky.

3. Pizza funghi au truffle from Basilico.
Basilico, like Lupa, is a delivery-only pizza restaurant. There are more than 5 outlets, dotted all over London, and you call the outlet nearest to you (in my case it happens to be the one on Finchley Road). The pizza funghi au truffle has mushrooms, basil, chopped tomato, mozzarella, salami and truffle oil. The Caol Ila tasted sweet, with the smokiness blurred by the salami (and possibly the bits of burnt crust). There was a nutty flavour as well - probably the mushrooms, although I couldn't tell. Definitely discovered extra depth in the whisky here.


All three were good choices to go with the Caol Ila. I think my main lesson here is that like usually goes with like, or with zero - in other words, pair smokiness with smokiness, or with something neutral, otherwise the flavours will clash. The second lesson is that pairing high strength whisky with savoury food is a very good idea, as the alcohol will dissolve flavour components in the food and bring them to your nose's attention. If I had to choose, I'd say the best combination would be the whisky and Lupa's pizza. Their caramelised onions and their pizza crust suddenly seemed to leap out of my mouth into my nose when I had a swig of the whisky.