Svenska Eldvatten – Wheskykôrka 2016 6yo first fill Single Pedro Ximenez Hogshead 57,3% ABV

Friends and followers! This thursday (the 21st of April), people living in Sweden will be able to order the latest release from independent bottler Svenska Eldvatten ("Swedish Firewater"). The whisky will be available from 10 o'clock following this link.

This time around it's the third release in their series of bottlings called "Wheskykôrka". Now, as you might remember the name Wheskykôrka is a play with words of a famous Gothenburg seafood market called Feskekôrka (Fish-church) thus being modified into slightly west-coast dialect resulting in Wheskykôrka simply meaning Whiskychurch.

And of course I am very happy and thankful that Peter and Tommy has given me the opportunity to try the whisky before its release! On the facebook-page of Svenska Eldvatten they describe this third bottling in the following way (freely translated from swedish):

"Very smoky/peated and matured in a PX-sherry hogshead [250 litre] makes this bottling stand out very much from the previous editions of Wheskykôrka. Also, the two previous bottlings have been produced at Bunnahabhain, but this time around the whisky comes from another big distillery on Islay... Wheskykôrka 2016 was distilled in march 2009 and in november 2015 we bottled 246 bottles at a cask strenght of 57,3% ABV"

That being said, this is to be understood as a secret malt or as we say, a "bastard" malt! Exciting, right?! Ok, let's see what's on the nose!

cask sample of Wheskykôrka 2016

Nose:

Very, very peaty! The first thing that comes to mind besides the peaty-ness is something like band aid or plaster, meaning very medicinal. The peaty-ness also includes things like big whiffs of rubber, or even burnt rubber. Underneath that layer is something like smoked vanilla-chocolate in combination with sweet liquorice and pipe-tobacco. There is black pepper, some different herbs that seems impossible to pin down, and also something reminding me slightly of dark honey… wow, this is complex stuff indeed. But let me tell you people, it’s really hard to go beneath the top layer of peaty-ness, the peat covers almost all the other things on the nose… ok, let’s have a sip shall we?!

Palate:

Ooh! Very peaty indeed! In fact, big fat smoke in combination with a sugar- and citric-sweetness, at least for the first 2-3 seconds but then instantly a quite extreme salty-ness takes over, wow, that was quick! Once I’ve swallowed, back comes that enormous peat, or rather medicinal rubber smoke, and takes over. This is powerful and warming stuff! A huge dryness dominates everything in the aftertaste, giving in to the herbs and the black pepper… it’s almost like my mouth is filled with smoke from a chocolat-y cigarillo, after a few seconds my mouth starts to water immensly… slight, slight touches of honey in the distant… this was a really interesting experience, a real beast!

To sum-up:

The agressive-ness surely is related to the age, the fact that the whisky is not so old, but let me say that I really don not experience the whisky as being ”too young” or immature, rather just BIG. Also I’ve never really felt or experienced PX-maturation expressing itself like this before. In fact, it's very brutal in style!

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picture/copyright belongs to Svenska Eldvatten