Waxhouse Whisky Release 2
First up, a bit about Waxhouse...actually you can read it all here: About Waxhouse. Personally I like that story, the decision to bottle casks came purely from the passion for the stuff. No colouring is used or chill filtering carried out, so its a good start.
To add to that, I was previously a member of...a whisky society but gave it up for various reasons so I have turned to these smaller companies for independent bottles. You will often find a better quality of cask and this one is no exception.
Waxhouse very kindly sent me a sample of this to try so, onto the whisky. This was distilled at Glenrothes, filled into a first fill sherry butt, left for thirteen years (filled 05/06, bottled 02/20) and comes in it at 50.7%. There are 170 bottles and it is priced at £85 which I think is quite a good price.
Colour
I am not a fan of describing colour as whisky is brown, just different shades. But for the sake of doing things right and all that I am saying this is dark polished oak.
Nose
Its big on the Christmas cake. Raisin, cinnamon, orange, strawberry, brown sugar, marzipan, almond, nutty, dunnage warehouse.
Palate
Its giving what I would associate with Oloroso cask flavours. Stewed dark fruit, raisin, cherry, a bit of menthol, black treacle, nutty marzipan, dark chocolate. It follows the nose quite well actually.
Finish
Its quite oily this, so its quite long. Treacle gives way to brown sugar and chocolate. Purple grapes and grapefruit.
Overall
Its very tasty indeed. Is it a sherry bomb? It has all the flavours you would expect from a good sherried whisky. I think I would call it a sherry bomb, but its not quite the bombiest of bombs I have tried.
Score
Its well priced, so I (as always) urge you to find out for yourself, but id say... A- out of 9.5. I do like a good sherry cask!
Conclusions
I like this company, (which is important to me, when I choose where to spend money) their process for choosing casks is good. How they present their whisky, cask strength, no colour, no chill filtering and their pricing is fair. It is all things I look for when buying independent bottles. They don't shout as loudly as they maybe could (on Twitter anyway), but I will be keeping an eye on them as you know their stuff will be good...and you just can't beat wonky labels!
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| Picture courtesy of Waxhouse |
:)
Edit (From Waxhouse): "For clarity this one isn't quite cask strength. We found that flavour wise 50.7 hit the best mark"
