Even though it’s a Dutch independent bottler, it’s the first review of any Beek Spirit on the blog. So far, the products have either not been whisky or not something that peaked my interest.

Then, this came out. A Spanish single malt of a distillery I had not heard about, and my buddy RvB shared samples of this in our share-group. It sounded interesting and it was something rather new, so I thought I’d give it a try.

Honestly, I went in without any expectation. Well, maybe I expected it to be a so-so whisky, but I was ready to be surprised.

Interestingly, this is made by Acha Distillery, but all their whiskies come out under the Haran brand name. The distillery has been around since 1831, and they also produce gin, rum and liqueurs. I’m not sure what their market for the whiskies is, since it says on the website they’ve been producing it for over a hundred years, and there are only a handful of bottlings on Whiskybase. Well, they say they have a recipe from 1909, but not necessarily that they’ve been producing single malt under their own brand name since.

Anyway, let’s dive in!

Sniff:
The first sniff makes me seriously doubt the age of this. The aroma is more like a pre-3-year old spirit. There’s lots of immature alcohol and aggressive oak. It reminds me of under age American spirits of some new-ish distilleries.

Sip:
The palate continues down the rather aggressive path. It sure tastes like whisky, but not whisky that’s ready yet. Fierce oak influence, probably new oak, and again an American whisky like spirity thing. Bone dry, quite hot, very young. But not young like Scotch where there’s green notes of fresh barley.

Swallow:
Yeah, the finish is largely the same. Slightly warmer, slightly less aggressive. Quite long and there are some flavors of dried plums and raisins. A bitter note too.

In short, I’m not a fan. The finish does a bit of search and resque for the palate and nose of this dram, but I’m still glad I had only a sample and not an entire bottle.

The thing is, I don’t mind young whiskies, and I don’t mind strong wood influences per se. I also like American whiskies, but this one combines a lot of the less desirable flavors into a concoction that just doesn’t work for me. At all.

77/100

Still available for just under € 50