157.1 Toasty, roasty and oaky

Description

This release is strictly limited to one bottle per member.

Hot off the heels of our Paris Olympiad, where Australia more than kept its fair share of the medal tally, we’re releasing the first-ever French whisky bottled by the SMWS. Welcome Distillery 157 hailing from Lannion on the north coast of Brittany, this is the newest kid to the Society story, but far from the newest to whisky. Often when you see ‘dot ones’, they are new distilleries. Not the case with 157, who’ve been distilling for 100+ years now. This .1 is the first ever cask from the SMWS from this iconic French distillery, fully matured in a 1st-fill Spanish oak ex-Oloroso cask for 8 years.

We unwrapped a stick of cinnamon chewing gum and poured root beer into a glass, filling the room with myriad aromas such as liquorice root, nutmeg, acacia, anise, clove, molasses, eucalyptus and, of course, cinnamon. On the neat palate, we sipped a cup of oolong tea with that typical brown sugar sweetness, as well as toasty, roasty and oaky flavours, with a finish of melon jam with vanilla and lime. When we carefully added water, the nose turned into chocolate-and-yoghurt-coated raisins, candied orange slices and freeze-dried strawberries. To taste, there were plenty of toasted oats and nuts, honey granola, peach yoghurt and an apricot Danish.