Description
Cask 53.516 Smouldering delights
This felt like watching an aficionado excitedly preparing to experience their cigar. They carefully cut the end of the cigar to gently remove the wrapper so that the tobacco leaves remain intact, before finally smelling it unlit. Now they ensure a smooth burn and focus on the flavours – saffron buns, treacle, sticky ginger parkin and a chocolate and stout cake. Following careful reduction, the scent was that of baking a black sesame babka and preparing a sundried tomato vinaigrette using maple syrup as a sweetener. On the palate, we were served a lamb merguez containing many spices such as smoky rose harissa and smoked paprika, alongside sea salt and honey butter popcorn.
Cask 42.89 Engulfed by smoke
Myriad aromas greeted the Panel, with poached pears, clover honey, smoked slices of mango, smoked marzipan and orange zest cold-smoked with alder wood. To taste, we enjoyed a smoked coconut mango lassi, a Jamaican coffee liqueur and authentic aachener printen – richly spiced gingerbread cookies originating from the German city of Aachen, with deep caramel-like flavours and sweetened with a syrup made from sugar beet. Following reduction, we had a bowl of tagliatelle with mussels in a creamy white wine sauce prepared using smoked rapeseed oil. On the palate, the texture was amazing. How about carbon black-smoked vanilla madeleines and peppermint “smoke bomb” brownies?
Cask 29.294 A bed of moss and smoke
Thick heather honey and black treacle oozed over smoked ham served on a bed of moss and fine oak ash. Then came layers of black coffee and liquorice, accompanied by burnt hot cross buns sprinkled with salt. Adding water released waves of seaside aromas, as seashells and iodine were snagged in old fishing nets. Toffee apples and burnt limes bobbed about in the waves before a cloud of beechwood bonfire smoke engulfed lavender bushes and violets. After spending 22 years in an ex-bourbon hogshead this was transferred to a first fill STR barrique for the remainder of its maturation.
Cask 3.358 Ethereal drift
The neat nose bloomed with tobacco, lavender smoke and heather honey. We also noted leather armchair vibes, very old cognac, beeswax furniture polish and hessian cloth. Water revealed briny and fresh coastal tones, fried seaweed, teriyaki salmon and charred mango. Reduction also brought a silkiness to the texture, along with more direct and luscious fruitiness on the palate in the form of oranges, more mangoes and pineapple, then heathery smokiness, tobacco and more hessian vibes. This was matured in an ex-bourbon hogshead for 17 years before being transferred to a first fill ex-bodega PX barrique.
