Hey all friends
and followers! SamuelWhisky is back after a long and well needed vacation! I’ve
had a great summer, amongst many other things I did trips to two distilleries
and I’ll make sure to share some pictures and a few lines on those adventures
sometime soon… Hope all of you guys also have had a grrreat time and are ready
to move on into a cozy autumn and a lot of interesting releases, festivals and
tasting notes!
I sure do feel
ready because a couple of days ago I received some mail from the guys at
’Svenska Eldvatten’ (Swedish Firewaters), the envelope contained a sample of
their next release, due tomorrow at the swedish state monopoly, a single cask
bourbon matured Ardmore at 50,2% ABV. As you might know Ardmore is special in
the way that it’s a Highland (Speyside) distillery that produces peated whisky!
As far as I’ve learned the ppm is between 12-15. This particular cask, SE030, gave
180 bottles so it’s a quite small release. Almost 14yo.
For those of you
not living in Sweden ’Svenska Eldvatten’ is available here. Okey, let’s try it!
Nose:
Opening the
sample bottle there is instantly big whiffs of some really heavy smoke, drawing
towards logs and bold pipe tobacco. Nice! Pouring some in my glass and nosing
it carefully gives a kind of a ”dry smoke” with almost grape-peel-ish vibes. Cool!
The bourbon influence (vanilla) also gives me a kind of a ”dry” feeling, as if
I can feel on the nose that this will really dry out my mouth. Quite complex
this little dram… There is actually something reminding me of cucumber-water,
which I’ve never felt in a whisky before J and it’s kind of moving into just a tad
tequila-esque (what?!) somehow… it’s all kind of ”green” if you know what I
mean… exciting! Let’s se what we have on the palate!
Palate:
This is great
stuff (in Swedish I loudly bursted out to myself ”Å fy f*n va god!” but we will
censor that in this politically correct translation…)! Wow, It’s really robust
in the peat, big peat comes first, but not too big, saltyness that clings to
the tip of my tounge, then we have a grand vanilla and creaminess, I never
thought it would be this creamy, I thought it would be rather dry, but this is
mouthwatering creaminess! The alcohol-level is perfect. In the aftertaste comes
something really herby-ish and a slight rubber touch, and then actually becomes
quite dry (smacking my mouth…), just above medium dry.
Wow, the ones
who manages to get a hold of a bottle from this release sure is lucky! Well
done in choosing this cask fellas! A big thanks to Tommy and Peter for the
sample, now I’ll pour myself the rest of it! J Slainté!
