Yet another new distillery. I must have read about it somewhere, but when I saw the bottling in a newsletter I was still surprised. There are quite a few new-ish distilleries, so it’s hard to clearly see a single tree in the massive forest and keep track of everyone of them.

Anyway, a highland distillery in the vicinity of where I’m hoping to travel in the near future. I thought I would investigate a bit more. I didn’t do a bottle-share, because I have been doing quite a few too many of late, but I just got my hands on a sample.

When reading the website I was hoping for a bit of an artisan approach in the way the Thompson brothers are doing in Dornoch, and it looks quite promising. There are a lot of technical details on the website, as well as information to the ingredients and production process. Small stills, local barley, long fermentations. All good things!

It doesn’t say anything about the philosophy behind the products though. What are they aiming to produce? Are they aiming for modern whisky that will sell quite well, or going for a rather old fashioned approach?

Anyway, the information about the production process should result in a decent product. Of course this one is only three or four years old, so I’m not entirely sure what to expect. Let’s dive in!

Sniff:
There’s quite a bit of oak for such a young whisky. Barley, some straw, sponge cake and a surprising amount of lemon. Some fresh fruitiness all along.

Sip:
Spirity, in a not sweet way, with a bit of white pepper. Lemon with a bit of a pithy bitterness. Wood, barley, straw. It tastes mature in a much more old fashioned highland way.

Swallow:
A dry and gentle finish, with some length to it. Straw, dried lemon, pith, seeds. There’s a rye like spiciness to it too.

I am very surprised by this youngster! I didn’t have too high hopes with the ratings on Whiskybase being pretty low (currently a low 82 points). But the massive lemony fruitiness and crisp flavors, with the wood not resulting in too much vanilla or too much pushed dried fruits make me very enthusiastic.

At this time I regret not buying a whole bottle and having some more whisky to go back to, because I am much more wowed by this whisky than I expected in general, and based on the Whiskybase ratings… I think this is very promising!

86/100 (maybe even 87?)