CDI Boulet de Canon 12

CDI Boulet de Canon 12 is a no-age-statement release from the terroir-led French bottler Compagnie des Indes, a column-still rum matured in heavily peated whisky casks and bottled at 46%. It is a deliberate experiment, a rum dressed in the clothes of an Islay single malt, made for drinkers who chase smoke wherever they can find it.

The peated cask does the heavy lifting, bringing intense peat, cold smoke and ashy, cigar-like notes that sit over lighter honey, vanilla and pear from the spirit itself. The palate keeps the smoke, hazelnut and herbal character running long into a cigar-and-peat finish, the line between whisky cask and rum almost blurred. It is genuinely divisive, pure ashtray to some and a treat to others, but for peat-loving whisky drinkers it really clicks. Best sipped slowly or shown alongside smoky malts in a tasting.