tisdag 19 april 2016

Svenska Eldvatten – Wheskykôrka 2016 6yo first fill Single Pedro Ximenez Hogshead 57,3% ABV

Friends and followers! This thursday (the 21st of April), people living in Sweden will be able to order the latest release from independent bottler Svenska Eldvatten ("Swedish Firewater"). The whisky will be available from 10 o'clock following this link.

This time around it's the third release in their series of bottlings called "Wheskykôrka". Now, as you might remember the name Wheskykôrka is a play with words of a famous Gothenburg seafood market called Feskekôrka (Fish-church) thus being modified into slightly west-coast dialect resulting in Wheskykôrka simply meaning Whiskychurch.

And of course I am very happy and thankful that Peter and Tommy has given me the opportunity to try the whisky before its release! On the facebook-page of Svenska Eldvatten they describe this third bottling in the following way (freely translated from swedish):






"Very smoky/peated and matured in a PX-sherry hogshead [250 litre] makes this bottling stand out very much from the previous editions of Wheskykôrka. Also, the two previous bottlings have been produced at Bunnahabhain, but this time around the whisky comes from another big distillery on Islay... Wheskykôrka 2016 was distilled in march 2009 and in november 2015 we bottled 246 bottles at a cask strenght of 57,3% ABV"

That being said, this is to be understood as a secret malt or as we say, a "bastard" malt! Exciting, right?! Ok, let's see what's on the nose!

cask sample of Wheskykôrka 2016
Nose:
Very, very peaty! The first thing that comes to mind besides the peaty-ness is something like band aid or plaster, meaning very medicinal. The peaty-ness also includes things like big whiffs of rubber, or even burnt rubber. Underneath that layer is something like smoked vanilla-chocolate in combination with sweet liquorice and pipe-tobacco. There is black pepper, some different herbs that seems impossible to pin down, and also something reminding me slightly of dark honey… wow, this is complex stuff indeed. But let me tell you people, it’s really hard to go beneath the top layer of peaty-ness, the peat covers almost all the other things on the nose… ok, let’s have a sip shall we?!

Palate:
Ooh! Very peaty indeed! In fact, big fat smoke in combination with a sugar- and citric-sweetness, at least for the first 2-3 seconds but then instantly a quite extreme salty-ness takes over, wow, that was quick! Once I’ve swallowed, back comes that enormous peat, or rather medicinal rubber smoke, and takes over. This is powerful and warming stuff! A huge dryness dominates everything in the aftertaste, giving in to the herbs and the black pepper… it’s almost like my mouth is filled with smoke from a chocolat-y cigarillo, after a few seconds my mouth starts to water immensly… slight, slight touches of honey in the distant… this was a really interesting experience, a real beast!


To sum-up:
The agressive-ness surely is related to the age, the fact that the whisky is not so old, but let me say that I really don not experience the whisky as being ”too young” or immature, rather just BIG. Also I’ve never really felt or experienced PX-maturation expressing itself like this before. In fact, it's very brutal in style!

Please make sure also to follow my FB-page by going here, and my twitter-page by going here. Copyright © and All Rights Reserved on all tasting notes by SamuelWhisky and pictures likewise belong to SamuelWhisky unless stated. If you would like to use any such material that belongs to SamuelWhisky or associated with SamuelWhisky, please ask by sending me an email to samuelkarlssonorebro@gmail.com

picture/copyright belongs to Svenska Eldvatten

måndag 11 april 2016

Swedish whisky from Hven – Megrez 45% ABV

Friends and followers! Once again I've been sent a nice package from the nice people of the swedish Island distillery Hven! This time it contained their latest whisky "Megrez" (one of the stars in the constellation "The Big Dipper"). Megrez was released about a month ago and now I finally have time to review it! 

The info regarding maturation etcetera that I have received from the distillery is the following: 

"The Base in Megrez is 5% Chocolate malt, 40% Peated malt [26ppm] and 55% Pilsner malt. The distillate has matured on 8,4% French Petraea, 33,4% French Robur and 58,2% American Muehlenbergii. The whisky has had a finish on Spanish Quercus Robur. These 500L marrying casks have previously held Pedro Ximénez Sherry... (...) This whisky is bottled at site of the distillery holding 45 vol%, no carbon- or chill filtering, no colour or other additives. It is organic certified and natural, as should be. Every bottle is individually numbered and controlled before being waxed by hand"

Sounds great right?! Ok, let's see what we have here! 

Nose:
When nosing on a distance of say 5 centimetres from my nose I pick up a sweet kind of brown sugary nose with really interesting hints of iron or some other kind of metal… I also pick up something like weak and refrigirator cold coffe, touches of milk chocolate mixed with that iron thing again. With the nose in the glass I feel a soft peat, dried peach, vanilla in the background and leather in the very distant. There is also something wine-ish, or port-ish, moving towards an oloroso-esque nose. Nosing deeply and even closer I feel something a bit, not really sour but, citric in combo with that iron thing again, hmm, interesting with that iron thing, I’ve never really felt that before… In general, the nose is medium dark in style, quite fruity (peach) and medium peat.


Palate:
Sooo incredibly smoooooth! Wow… Very much on brown sugar, soft vanilla, overripe banana, whisky soaked dark raisins, and a slight but thick or forest-y kind of peaty-ness… also milk chocolate and in the distant that cold coffee thing is present. Taking a bigger sip the citric stuff shows itself for fractions of a second but quickly moves on into what might best be described as a very appealing ”malt-y character”… Taking an even bigger sip the aftertaste has a medium ”burn” to it that gives a bit of a fire-y charachter, nice!


To sum up:
People, if there was a price in the category ”Perfect balance”, tastewise, this whisky would definitely win the gold! This is a masterpice in balance, not meaning boring of course but perfect balance between all the elements in first and foremost the palate. The peat-yness is present to perfection, just enough peat to match the overall character, wow!

Big thanks to the nice people at Hven for the opportunity to try this beauty!


Please make sure also to follow my FB-page by going here, and my twitter-page by going here. Copyright © and All Rights Reserved on all tasting notes by SamuelWhisky and pictures likewise belong to SamuelWhisky unless stated. If you would like to use any such material that belongs to SamuelWhisky or associated with SamuelWhisky, please ask by sending me an email to samuelkarlssonorebro@gmail.com