#BTC37 #BlindDrams Tasting Notes

 These are my tasting notes and results from the Blind Tasting Consortium's 37th #BlindDrams evening.

These drams were picked by John @jwbassman_

Whisky 'machinery' - the Mash Tun

A new series looking at some of the 'machinery' used in a distillery to create whisky - this time the Mash Tun.

I've covered the basic process of creating whisky here, but I'm going to explore the machinery a little more in this series.

Virtual tasting: Wolfburn with Inverurie Whisky Shop

The -Pack gang are back! After a A.D. Rattray #RatPack tasting, we talked to the  Inverurie Whisky Shop about a 2nd Zoom Whisky tasting and they came up with a Wolfburn Small batch tasting - so the newly renamed #WolfPack were back in action!

The Inverurie Whisky Shop is a small shop in the town of Inverurie - great if you live near Aberdeen, but not too much use to those of us living in England or elsewhere. But they do a great line in both public and private tutored tastings.

Scotch Whisky Advent Calendar

I was lucky enough to receive a whisky advent calendar from those lovely people at @DrinksByTheDram, it was their Scotch Whisky 2019 edition.

Each day during #Dramvent I opened a door and discovered what was inside!

Review of my whisky year - 2017

First of all thank you to all the people who have read my blog (c16,500) and followed me on Twitter (c900) since I started back in January with my first whisky post.

What's Grain Whisky all about then?

I've recently tried quite a few Grain whiskies, and been impressed by some of them, so much so that I've crossed out the word malt in my blog description!

So I thought I'd try and find out a bit more about Grain Whiskies and what makes them different from Malt Whiskies.

#GBMM2017 Wolfburn Distillery

On Saturday 12th August Maltman Mike organised and ran a little whisky tasting shindig at the House Of Malt in Carlisle #GBMM2017! You can read the introduction here!

As I've already written a "Newer Distilleries" blog on Wolfburn this one will concentrate on their whiskies which we tasted on the night.

Unfortunate Wolfburn weren't able to be with us on the night, it's a long way from Thurso to Carlisle, but instead they sent us a bottle of each of their four malts to try!

Wolfburn's four whiskies

"Four?" you ask, yes "Four" I said! We were very lucky to be able to have the first bottle of their new whisky : Morven to try!

Maltman Mike introduced us to the distillery then the pair of us took it in turns to introduce the whiskies as samples were poured to try.

First up Mike talked about the Northland

Whisky : Northland (NAS)

Characteristics : 700ml, 46% ABV. NCF Non-coloured

Price : £45

Colour : Pale Gold

Nose : Citrus fruit with some saltiness rounded off with a little peat smoke - delicious!

Palate : Sweet honey and some nuttiness.

Finish : A little bitter with some spice and smoke.

Overall : The youthfulness of the whisky come through on the palate - it's a little rough around the edges but I think you'll struggle to find anything better at this age.

Then I described the Aurora and No.128

Whisky : Aurora (NAS)

Characteristics : 700ml, 46% ABV. NCF Non-coloured

Price : £43

Colour : Gold

Nose :  A little sherry in this one as expected making it quite different from the Northland. A little bread dough or porridge, again with some nuts.

Palate : Some pear and a little bitter orange, more of the porridge and a little sherry.

Finish : Shery with a little spice.

Overall : A different dram from the Northland, obviously due to the different casks used to mature the spirit. A think overall I preferred the slightly peaty Northland at this stage.

Whisky : No. 128 (NAS)

Characteristics : 700ml, 46% ABV. NCF Non-coloured

Price : £70

Colour : Gold

Nose : Vanilla and peat smoke dominate with a little chocolate orange developing.

Palate : Apples, honey and sultanas, like that baked pudding my mum used to make when I was young! The peat smoke is always there but not dominating and a little vanilla develops over time - yummy!

Finish : Slightly drying with a lovely smokey finish.

Overall : I loved this dram, much preferring it to the first two! I am a bit of an Islay fan boy and love peaty whisky - this wasn't anywhere near an Islay but the smoke was just enough to satisfy - one to try if you can't take a full-on Islay yet!

Finally Mike introduced, for the first time in the world!, the Morven! House Of Malt were really excited about this one and really pleased to have the exclusive - it's going to be one of Wolfburn's standard drams using peated barley - look out for it next month when it becomes available here!

Whisky : Morven (NAS)

Characteristics : 700ml, 46% ABV. NCF Non-coloured

Price : £45

Colour : Pale Gold - a little paler than the peated No. 128

Nose : Pear drops dominate with a little salt, over time vanilla and peat smoke develop with the pear drops changing to more pear and apple fruit.

Palate : Sweet and oily on the tongue with a little peat smoke with them orchard fruits coming through again with a little spice.

Finish : Drying with a long smokey finish.

Overall : This is a lovely dram, it's different from the No. 128 more orchard rather than citrus fruits. You wouldn't guess it was only 3 or 4 years old, showing that Wolfburn have some excellent spirit which through the use of some good wood is maturing into great whisky - get some!

All the bloggers at the back of the room busy scribbling notes, but I think this is the first published review of Wolfburn's Morven!

Overall a fantastic set of drams, all under 4 years old, it just shows what you can achieve when you have the passion and commitment to create some craft whisky!

Many thanks to Wolfburn for supplying the whiskies!

Back to the #GBMM2017 introduction!

#GBMM2017 Introduction

On Saturday 12th August Maltman Mike organised and ran a little whisky tasting shindig at the House Of Malt in Carlisle #GBMM2017!

As you can see from the logo there was going to be a good turn out from some of the newer distilleries as well as the more established and of course a great bottler.

Twenty free tickets were made available and all were snapped up quite quickly - as well as the usual band of dodgy bloggers and vloggers there were some locals visiting the House of Malt shop in Carlisle for some free drams.

This blog gives an overview of the evening and I'll do more in-depth blogs of each of the dram providers!

The Great Big Malted Meetup 2017 took place at The House Of Malt in Carlisle

The shop is owned by Ben, Mike works there! They sell a large range of whiskies, gins and vodkas and an ever growing range of craft beers. They also sell online from www.houseofmalt.co.uk

Photo @JWBassman_

It's a great venue to hold a whisky tasting..

Inside The House of Malt

...but we actually started off with some Temu Gin, House of Malt have a UK exclusive on this Monk distilled gin all the way from Finland!

Crafted from rare wild forest ingredients
deep in the Finnish Taïga—the last
primitive, untamed forest
wilderness of the North

The meet up was due to start at 7pm but all those thirst bloggers turned up early to swap samples, meet face-to-face for the first time and share stories. It was really great to meet people for the first time when your only previous contact had been over twitter!

All the bloggers sat at the back of the room leaving the front for the locals!

Blogger's Corner! Photo @JWBassman_

It was great to meet Grimm @GentlemanGrimm, Vin @NNWhisky, John @JWBassman_, Daniel  @Whisky_Viking and Sarah @iheartwhisky for the first time 'in the flesh'.

A few samples were exchanged, some from secret suitcases!

Sample Suitcase!

As each of the distillery / bottler reps arrived introductions were made, more samples were tried and stories swapped (we hadn't even started for real!).

The drams to be tasted were lined up, unfortunately the Lakes Distillery were a little late so I didn't get them included in the line-up:

Part of the line up!

The plan for the night was:

• Abbie and Chris from Cooper King, but drinking a dram from Tomatin (Read more here!)

• Jan from Douglas Laing (Read more here!)

• Chris from The Lakes Distillery (Read more here!)

• Maltman Mike and me presenting Wolfburn (Read more here!)

I'll add links to the individual blog entries above over the next few days!

Lots of whisky was drunk, some cake was eaten (some people ate a lot more than some others!) and real as opposed to on-line friendships made!

Me, John, Vin & Grimm

It was a fantastic evening, many thanks to Maltman Mike for organising, House Of Malt for use of their beautiful premises, the dram suppliers Tomatin, Douglas Laing, Lakes Distillery & Wolfburn, Cooper King for driving all the way over from Yorkshire to tell us about their plans and all my fellow tasters for making it great!

Newer Distilleries 1 : Wolfburn

This is the first in an occasional series about newer distilleries - mainly because I wanted to find out a little more about them and I thought if I wrote a blog entry - you could too!

The first entry is about the Wolfburn Distillery

Location

Wolfburn Distillery is located in Thurso in the far North east of Scotland, it's the most Northerly mainland distillery.

History

Although there was a Wolfburn Distillery on the site in the 19th century, there is little trace of it or its whiskies still around. The present distillery was started in August 2012 with the first new make flowing in January 2013.

The name Wolfburn comes from the nearby Wolf Burn (stream) which supplies the distillery with it's water. Wolves were once a common site in Scotland and the logo comes from a woodcut by Konrad Gesner, a 16th Century zoologist.

Photo : albaimport.de

Photo : HeraldScotland.com

Production process
Wolfburn have a great process diagram on their website explaining how their whisky is created.

Diagram : Wolfburn.com

Wolfburn have two traditional pot stills of 5,500 litres (Wash) and 3,800 litres (Spirit) with a weekly output of c 3,500 litres. There is no automation in the process.

Shane Fraser, the Master Distiller, decribes the new make as "Sweet and malty, like Weetabix with warm milk added" there is also some "Dried apricot but with a slight spice behind it, with a splash of water added it softens the aroma and I get more of a banana smell with a slightly perfumed background.”

The spirit is casked at 63.5% abv and matured in a mixture of 2nd fill American Oak Quarter casks (120 litres), 1st fill American Oak ex Bourbon casks (200 litres) and 1st and 2nd fill Spanish Oak ex Oloroso Sherry casks (500+ litres) and matured in dunnage warehouses on site.

Photo : John O'Groat Journal

Bottling also takes place on site, all of the whisky produced is non-coloured and non-chill filtered.

Photos : @Wolfburn_Whisky

Whiskies
Wolfburn currently bottles the:

Northland - matured in the Quarter Casks this is a fruity malty dram with a hint of peat. Bottled at 46%, priced at round £45-£50 for 700ml

Aurora - matured in the ex Bourbon and Sherry casks with is a sweet sherried nutty dram with a hint of spice. Bottled at 46%, priced at around £45-£50 for 700ml

Small Batch No. 128 (from Warehouse No.1, Stow No. 28) - matured in small 100 litre first-fill ex-bourbon casks, a lightly peated smoky dram with sweet honey. In case you don't know, I didn't, a stow is a row of casks in a dunnage warehouse!

Morven - a lightly peated whisky coming in September 2017. Bottled at 46%, priced at around £45-£50 for 700ml

Specially selected or experimental casks are also bottles as the Kylver Series.

Website
Link to the distillery website

Video
Link to the promo video

Visit
The distillery is open 10am - 4,30pm Mon-Fri with tours at 2pm. Weekend and holidays may be different - always a good idea to book in advance!

Contact
email : info@wolfburn.com
phone : +44 1847 891 051 (note: the office is not always manned – email is the best way to reach them)