When I started to look into the history of Cradle Mountain the story got a little interesting!
I've talked about Cadenheads a little before, as I'm sure you know Cadenheads are Scotland's oldest independent bottler, so one or more of their team have the really difficult job of travelling the world, sampling whisky and buying casks for the company to bottle.
They obviously weren't getting as far as Tansmania so a distiller called Andrew Morrison from The Darwin Distillery, wanting to compare the quality of his whisky against the best in Scotland, found himself in Scotland in 1993, with a sample of his maturing 15 month old whisky.
The Darwin Distillery was located in Ulverstone, Tasmania. Founded in 1989 by Brian Poke, one of the first two modern whisky distilleries in Australia – around the same time as Lark Distillery was built. It changed names a couple of times, first to the Franklin Distillery then The Small Concern Whisky Distillery. Cadenheads label their bottlings as Cradle Mountain (Small Concern).
Cadenheads were immediately impressed and ordered seven casks, unfortunately Morrision had to explain that they couldn't supply them because the distillery had run out of money and their equipment had been dismantled! Cadenheads offered to pay £25,000 up front to get the distillery back on its feet and obtain a supply of whisky for the European market. Morrision and his co-owner David MacLennan accepted the investment and from early 1994 the rebuilt distillery started producing whisky for Cadenhead and their local market. Towards the end of 1997 they'd once again ran out of money and distillery closed and the equipment sold for scrap.
This is where it now get's a little murkey... as far as I can find out the distillery no longer exists, there is however a stock of maturing whisky sat in a warehouse somewhere owned by a Joe Lahra with a business address in the Bangkok Bank Building, Hong Kong. Their website suggest some new releases this / next year. If anyone does have any further info I'd be interested in understanding what happened and what's going on!
There have been a number of release over the years including their own Single Malts, a number of Cadenhead releases and a Springbank Blend. This dram is a 1996 single cask from Cadenhead's, it has spend all of its 23 years in a Cabernet Sauvignon wine barrel and delivered 198 bottles at 53.2%. The colour is amazing!
Cadenhead's tasting notes suggest:
Nose: Peanut butter and raspberry jam. Mint chocolate, green tea and satsumas.Flavour: Big and chewy with more peanut butter with faint soft wood smoke. Honeycomb, cinnamon and dried fruits.
Finish: Long and chewy, dark chocolate, smoked peanuts and brown sugar.
My thoughts:
Appearance: Dark reddy gold in the glass has a 'thick appearance', swirls bead up and eventually fall as slow thick legs.
Nose: Musty, earthy dunnage warehouse, lots of strawberry, milk chocolate and a hint of smoke. A little time in the glass reveals loads of brown sugar and orange notes.
Palate: Thick syrupy arrival with loads of medicinal notes - cough syrup, antiseptic. It's big bold and very drying. There's the peanut butter that Cadenhead's talk about - definitely not there on the nose but in abundance on the palate, but it's very sweet. There's a lot of oak spice and red fruit on the tongue with a little of the milk chocolate from the nose.
Finish: Very drying, moisture stripped from the mouth, smoke and sherry notes along with the oak spice linger. There's a slightly sour citrus note right at the end.
Many thanks to @Pop_Noir for the sample swap!
No comments:
Post a Comment