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!

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