Spirit Of Yorkshire Filey Bay Orange Wine Cask

Whisky Festivals are a great place to try a wide selection of drams, it you're lucky a Brand ambassador might offer you something special from under the table!

At the recent Southport Winter festival I was lucky enough to try a Filey Bay dram finished in Orange Wine Barriques.

Bottler notes:

Over the last few years, deep within our warehouse, four ex-orange wine barriques have been happily maturing for this deliciously different special release. But this isn’t the skin contact orange wine you’d expect to find on the list of your local artisan wine bar.

“Vino Naranja del Condado de Huelva” comes from a very specific part of Spain, taking the sunshine and oranges that the south is famous for. Made in a similar way to other fortified wines but with a key difference: the grape spirit used to fortify the base wine has been aromatised with orange peel before being matured.

 

Matured for just over 7 years, firstly in ex-bourbon casks for 3 years and 3 months, to soften the spirit, before being reduced to 50% abv and then re-racked into orange wine casks for a further 3 years and 10 months.

Over the years the abv has slowly slipped away as the angels took their share. In this very rare example, the strength in the bottle of 46.2% is the strength that the whisky reached in the cask all on its own with no final reduction before bottling.

 Soft and fruity with flavours of orange cake, honeycomb, ripe citrus and stone fruits.

Let's see what it's like.... 

Appearance: Mid gold in the glass, swirls cling as a thin line take an age to bead up and fall as slow thin legs.

Nose: Oranges of every kind! Sweet orange flesh, orange marmalade, chocolate orange cake etc. There's some lovely apricot, peach and hints of dates.

Palate: thick, sweet arrival: runny orange marmalade, honey and a little caramel. It's juicy, mouth coating and yummy! A little spice as the liquid disappears. Each sip starts with sweetness, develops into soft fruit and citrus and ends with a lovely spice. 

Finish: Lingering orange marmalade, dried fruit, cinnamon spice and a hint of cask char.

Overall: It's not overly complex, it's at a nice drinking strength but it's just too bloomin expensive. When I tried this I immediately put it on the 'to buy' list but when it was released I was very disappointed to see the price : £85. Yes I get that there are only 1,100 bottles, it's a limited release and the casks were probably expensive but £85 for a 46% ABV whisky is just far too much in this day and age. 

Compared to other English distilleries it's maybe £10 too expensive. Cotswolds 'finished' whiskies (e.g. PX) come in at around £76 at 57% ABV. White Peak's Moscatel, Madeira and Rum finishes, all batches of less than 1,000, all 50%+ are around the £75 mark. Go north of the border to similarly sized distilleries and Glasgow 1770 release their small batches Marsala, Cognac etc at less than £60 at 55%+ ABV.