Top 7 Afterparty & Late Night Bottles: Port Charlotte Heavily Peated 10 Year

You knew this one was coming. Our concluding bottle to this wonderful countdown of perfect capstone pours, Port Charlotte 10 is a final word whisky in every possible sense. Packed with fallout shelter-level density, Krakatoa-level smoke, and Titian-level complexity, PC10 is God’s own Islay single malt. Whenever our species bows out from this planet’s stage in a tidal wave of nuclear hellfire and/or self-inflicted ecological collapse, we can hand a bottle of this to St. Peter at the Pearly Gates and confidently report that industrialization had *some* perks.

It goes without saying that pouring this for your elite company at night’s end is a bold play, but then again, audentes Fortuna juvat. This whisky brims so maximally with peat smoke that I think it’s actually considered a biofuel in some jurisdictions. So, this may not be the one to introduce longtime bourbon drinkers to peated whisky…unless of course they realize sometimes you have to run before you can walk. It also should be said that although this is *the* Islay single malt for so many of us, PC10 uses Caledonian Forest peat. Which means stow away your memories of iodine-heavy Laphroaig — there’s a decidedly arboreal quality to this smoke that evokes driftwood, pine, and campfires far more than it does any Islay salt and iodine flavor.

Marching in lockstep with the bonfire is lemon peel, saltwater, honey, and soft earth at “This one goes to 11” level intensity. I’ve had many whiskies that try to break you with heat; this one tries to break you with sheer flavor alone. PC10 almost drinks like it’s trying to overload your brain through pure density of flavor, a la a Lovecraftian hero who learns too much. And therein is the majesty of this bottle: there are so many hidden beauties living in the briny, smoky depths that it seduces you into coming back to explore a little further with every sip.

So for $70-ish American dollars, you get non-chill filtered magnificence born of barrels aged at least 10 years, with a mere dash of water added to yield a 100 proof bottling. If want to impress a scotch drinker, this will blow their mind.

Image courtesy of Jon who also writes on Low Class & High Proof.

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