Start with Heresy! (Bundle)

Description

Batch 19 Frazzle dazzle

For this experimental batch, we teamed up with our friends at Tempest Brewery in the Scottish Borders. We commissioned Speyside Cooperage to create some new American oak hogsheads, with a heavy toast and a medium char. These hogsheads were then sent to Tempest, where they were filled with an off-the-wall smoked barley wine (think 12.5% ABV smoked stout!). After five months, the beer was bottled and the casks were filled with selected un-peated Speyside malts. These whiskies underwent a period of additional maturation for just under three years, before being blended together to create this unique whisky.

The initial aroma was dark like toffee, chocolate, ginger cake, black pepper, liquorice, and char. In time, an oily, slightly buttery note developed like in beurre noisette roasted potatoes. On the palate, there was a chocolate tart with blackcurrant compote and hazelnut praline as well as strawberry rhubarb Turkish delight and a slightly frazzling herbal and hoppy note in the finish. After reduction, we charred pineapple and mango slices, roasted peaches with thyme and baked homemade scones to serve with clotted cream. To taste, vanilla cheesecake, salted caramel butterscotch ice cream. In the finish we were frazzled by a whisper of maple cured bacon.

Batch 31 Wandering alchemy

We set ourselves the challenge of creating a small-batch blended malt using ingredients from each of the five Scotch whisky producing regions. The resulting whisky has bags of character, wisps of smoke, and an abundance of honey. Reminiscent of “old-school” blends of the past, we thought.

What witchcraft and molten japery is this? At least, that’s what our raised eyebrows and throaty musings queried. Surely this dram was much older and much more ‘old style’ that it had a right to be? We detected deep and enticing notes of soft, heathery peat smoke. Then encroaching medicinal charms, pine wood, camphor, cooling bonfire embers and tendrils of seaweed! Water dialed up the charm vibes to ‘Roger Moore’: elegant wood smoke, fragrant phenolics, old herbal and tar liqueurs and a kiss of cask-aged mead. The palate was decadently rich and mouthcoating, yet warming and gentle. Its rich herbal character mingled with more medicines, dried mint, mineral oils and fatty sheep wool oils. Reduction brought us wood spices, resinous hardwood extracts, smoked black olives, pure tar, hessian and a lovely medley of aniseed, salted liquorice and soy sauce – what despicable chemist brewed this sorcery!?

Batch 21 Dunnage nougat

What a tale of oak and fire we have here! We selected a wonderfully fruity Speyside single malt, which was maturing in bourbon hogsheads. We moved the whisky into a variety of custom coopered casks. In American oak we had new oak hogsheads made with a heavy toast and a medium char, and new oak barriques with a heavy toast (no char) and a medium plus toast (a little lighter, again no char). In French oak we opted for barriques in the same toasting specifications as the American barriques.

We found ourselves in a champagne frame of mind nosing neat, as we soaked gingerbread in the celebratory-worthy bubbly beside a classic kir royale cocktail with crème de cassis. On the palate, pears poached in pinot noir came topped with chantilly cream and vanilla custard, before a refreshing finish of elderflower sorbet. Following reduction one Panel member had torrone – Italian nougat flavoured with orange and packed with toasted almonds – in a dunnage warehouse, while others enjoyed caramelised cinnamon plantain. The taste was that of bergamot honey on creamy porridge with butter, as well as candied-and-coated-in-sugar yuzu peels.