Kininvie Experiments

Kininvie is a distillery you may not have heard of, it's located in Dufftown on the same site as Balvenie and Glenfiddich, the three constituents of the Monkey Shoulder Blended Malt, so as you might think is owned by William Grant & Sons.

The reason you may not of heard of them is that nearly all of their output goes into Grant's Blends, so what's changed? Well recently they released a set of three experiments, and the geeky scientist inside me said "You've got to try them!"

So what's this all about then? The Kininvie website tells you everything but to summarize:

Kininvie Works is our free-thinking Distillery. A place a little out of the way, where we (that’s one distillery manager, one stillman, and plenty of others too) like to experiment. We don’t work to a commercial agenda, that’s not what motivates us. What excites us is what we can learn, and what kind of Scotch Whiskies we can make.

Today, we’re still inventing. Kininvie Works is what we call our Distillery experiments – named after the time we dedicate every day to innovation. Our future is all about experimentation, playing around and mastering many more ways to make Scotch Whisky. We seek to introduce the whisky drinker to new, exciting flavour profiles and expressions.

  

We’re always altering our set up, allowing us to learn constantly. That’s still what we do every day, and will continue to do. While we’ve released some Kininvie casks to the market, we’re not tied down by set pressures to produce. This means, unlike other distilleries, we have plenty of time and freedom to focus on our experiments.

The three experiments are labelled KVSM001, KVSG002 and KVBL003 using the coding

This hints at future experimental releases!

The labels give more information about the experiment's objectives, purpose, variables and observations (it's just like being back at school in Mr Lay's Chemistry class!)

At the end of the day the main thing about any experiment is getting the results and in this case trying the whiskies - so here are my thoughts:

KVSM001 47% Single Malt 6yo

Appearance: Very pale gold in the glass, swirls give slow thin legs.

Nose: Very fruity, orchard fruit, pear drops and a little vanilla.

Palate: Very smooth, warming, fruit notes and a little ginger spice. There's some tropical notes - dried pineapple covered in icing sugar, coconut etc. Digestive biscuits?

Finish: Mild ginger spice with hints of bounty bars - milk chocolate covered coconut. It's not overly long.

Overall: A very drinkable Speyside almost Irish dram with an almost grain quality to it.

KVSG002 47.8% Single Grain 4yo

Appearance: Mid gold in colour, swirls leave an invested crown of dots which fall as slow thin legs.

Nose: Cut grass, a little heather, hints of spice and milk chocolate. There's no huge vanilla notes you'd usually associate with a single grain.

Palate: Smooth oily arrival, the rye and virgin oak  give a lovely spice combination. Cherries, milk chocolate and poached pear notes. Tasty!

Finish: Long lingering oaky spice, orchard fruit and a little chocolate.

Overall: Not really grain like in taste, apart from the spice notes - there's no vanilla. Very nice dram though - can see me enjoying the rest of this bottle more than the single malt one.

KVSB003 48.2% Blend

Appearance: Light gold, but the darkest of the three in the set. Swirls leave a very thin line which takes a while to fall as slow thin legs.

Nose: Although it has more malt than grain the nose is more grain like, spicy rye, a little vanilla and some orchard fruit.

Palate: Smooth oily arrival, cereal notes and a big bite of spice. Milk chocolate and dried pineapple again but this has some dried fruit notes.

Finish: Long warming and spicy, a little drying. Some dried fruit.

Overall: This isn't a blend of the first two, it's not entirely clear , it could be the grain but it isn't the single malt. More spicy than the grain but not quite as good.


Overall a nice set of drams, easy drinkers, good ABVs and reasonable priced. Geeky drams for geek drinkers they may be experiments but they are they really anything different from what's available from other distilleries? For me the grain was best, closely followed by the blend and finally the single malt. Looking forward to their future experiments!

I also like their manifesto!