Whisky Import Nederland celebrates their 18th birthday this year, and here I am reviewing a bottle I’ve had since their tenth anniversary. This is one of those things that I bought but wasn’t overly thrilled with, so it got a little bit forgotten.

And some things should not have been forgotten were lost. History became legend. Legend became myth. And for three quarters of a decade the bottle passed out of all knowledge.

Anyway, I tend to like whisky from Brittany / Bretagne. I’ve gone through several bottles already and have some others lined up that I should get around to at some point. Sure, it has to do with having some awesome summer holidays there, over the last couple of years, but apart from that I think they are doing something quite right in the north-western part of France.

This one, however, comes from a wine cask. And that is stretching things for any distillery. Add to that that it’s only five years old, and things tend to get quite weird. But, let’s see if that assumption and memory was correct. Maybe time and oxygen in a bottle really helped this one!

Sniff:
Even though it’s only five years old, it has a certain maturity to it. The wine cask is rather obvious, and makes the spirit behind it rather generic (or obscures it, so to say). Initially there’s quite some sweetness before the more nutty, bitter and fruity notes come through.

Sip:
The palate is surprisingly gentle, but does quickly add a bit of a black grape skin and seed bitterness. It’s quite dry and with that bitterness it becomes a bit twig like instead of woody. The bitter notes keep building, and in combination with the also building alcohol heat it becomes rather hot.

Swallow:
The finish initially has that lingering bitterness but that quickly mellows to a bit of a fruit cake note with baked cherries and stewed red fruits. Still rather oaky and far more mature than it’s five years have any right to give it.

In the end, it’s quite a bit more mature than a generic five year old whisky, but it’s also rather one dimensional. I’m not sure if it’s the spirit or that it is the cask instead, but the wine like dryness and bitter notes go full frontal.

In my memory this one was far less enjoyable and I’ve been unjustly harsh for this one. It’s actually a rather nice dram with enough force to be more than just a very fortified wine.

83/100