Amrut Raw Cask 61,3% ABV – Dennis Steckel Selection!!!

Dear friends and followers alike! When working the Örebro Beer and Whiskyfestival about a month ago I passed by Clydesdales stand to have a chat with Dennis Steckel, the superfan of Amrut and founder of Amrutfever, to see what he had up his sleeve. 

Enthusiastically he pulled out an Amrut bottled in his honor!!! I asked him how this bottling and great news came about and he told me that one day he had mysteriously received a bunch of samples with the only instruction to choose his favorite. Having done so he did not think more about it, but, when arriving at the festival to work in the Clydesdale-stand he was presented with this bottling in his honor! Wow! Look how very happy Dennis looks about it all :)

Dennis clearly showing signs of The Amrut-Fever ;)

All I know about this whisky is that it has been finished in a sherry cask and that it has had almost no filtration at all, Raw Cask in it's essence. There are only 163 bottles available worldwide, and out of these around 50 are reserved for Sweden where it will be released at the state monopoly tomorrow (the 18th of December 2017). You can view the product here and order it here. 

Since I was allowed to draw a sample I now have the great joy and pleasure of presenting my review and notes below

Nose:

Very sweet and absolutely boasting of dark raisins, vanilla sweetness, vanilla creamyness and big/fat honey (light non-liquid honey). Also, there is a quite evident wood-yness but it sits very close to all the vanilla stuff so it does not really come across as being youngish. There is however a slight touch of yeast and/or new make in the distant, but, with thanks to the greedy angels this is all in the background. Above the woodyness, and encapsulating it, is a beautiful scent of very creamy orange peel that has a perfect sting of nutty and/or almondy alcohol to it, absolutely beautiful!

Taste: Wow! Starts of with great power and sting from the alcohol, and then things go very fast: salty and very intense, moving rapidly into a citrusfruity vanilla and from there fast into chunky marzipan and almonds, than moving swiftly into a spicy and very dry woodyness intermingling with dried figs. Then things start to slow down, my mouth is getting more dry and most of all there is a very interesting mix of somthing "sour" and sweet at the roof of my mouth. This finally fades away into more almonds, more dryness (this time a very soft dryness), and finally closing off with orange syrup and liquid light honey...

To sum up: This sure was a great pick by Dennis and a great tribute to him and his great and enthusiastic work with Amrutfever! Big thanks to the people at Clydesdale for the opportunity to try it and to review it before its release! Please make sure to follow my FB-page by clicking here, my instagram by clicking here and my twitter-page by clicking here. Copyright © and All Rights Reserved on all tasting notes and text by SamuelWhisky and pictures likewise belong to SamuelWhisky, unless stated. If you would like to use any material that belongs to SamuelWhisky or associated with SamuelWhisky, please ask by sending me an email to samuelkarlssonorebro[at]gmail.com and by stating the source

Peated anCnoc – Peatheart Batch 1 46% ABV!

Dear friends and followers alike! When working the Borlänge Beer and whiskyfestival a couple of weeks ago I passed by the stand of Berntsson Brands to see if there was anything that their Brand Ambassador Martin Tjäder wanted me to review for them, and of course there was, their all new anCnoc Peatheart Batch 1 in which the barley has been peated to 40ppm. Please feel free to read all about it by clicking here. 

Here in Sweden Peatheart will be launched at the state monopoly tomorrow and you can view the product by clicking here. Ok, let's see what we have here!

Nose: If i start by not nosing the peat itself, I notice first something reminding me of Iron/metal (however not rust), there is also a very interesting mix of cucumber- and limewater. Nosing the peat, it's very much not Islay peat, not very smoky but rather very grassy, ashes and sundried grass. all in all a kind of "watery", slightly hollow, peatyness. The strength does not at all say 46%, on the contrary very calm, still and smooth, no signs of newmake or yeast, so the word I'm looking for is probably mature. Finally, a slight, slight touch of vanilla pods

Taste:

Wow/Ouch! A lot more peat on the taste than what was on the nose, that's unexpected! Starts off on burnt/sundried Grass and salty (turkish pepper) peat, moves on into ashes with traces of vanilla, moving on again into "green/forest-y gunpowder" as well as fireworks (what some might associate with slight touches of sulphur), and finally in the aftertaste (which is quite long) there is a "herbs-and-spices" kind of medium dryness. What strikes me with the aftertaste is that when the medium dryness has grown and grown for quite a while (say 30-45 seconds) my mouth starts watering and a combination of white-sugar sweetness and vanilla fudge appears and evolves for quite a long time

To sum up:

This is definitely the most mature and "calm" peated anCnoc I've tasted so far (counting in it's big blast of peat in the beginning of the taste contrary to the nose). Given the dryness and very slight touch of vanilla there seems to be quite a lot of 2nd-fill bourbon casks in the mix, which I must say that I like since it really lets the house style of peated anCnoc come to the fore/front of the taste👌Big thanks to the people at Berntson for the chance to review this one and to be able to taste it before its release, Sláinte!

Please make sure to follow my FB-page by clicking here, my instagram by clicking here and my twitter-page by clicking here. Copyright © and All Rights Reserved on all tasting notes and text by SamuelWhisky and pictures likewise belong to SamuelWhisky, unless stated. If you would like to use any material that belongs to SamuelWhisky or associated with SamuelWhisky, please ask by sending me an email to samuelkarlssonorebro[at]gmail.com and by stating the source

pic belongs to systembolaget.se