WhistlePig is known for its rye whiskeys, so the launch of a single malt comes as an enormous shock. Even larger than that, nonetheless, is its age: 21 lengthy years in barrel.
Formally often called The Béhôlden, this whiskey comes with loads of punny, anti-Scotch goofiness that comes throughout as a little bit of smoke and mirror work. “So uncommon and so fanciful it makes unicorns appear quaint by comparability.” “We’re speaking about one thing way more severe than fairy story – the brand new world’s first super-aged Single Malt.” “Right here to outdare custom, change course on the chieftain o’ the puddin-race, and liberate American palates from the haggis quo.”
Nicely the much less stated about all that the higher, I believe. Higher to concentrate on what’s within the glass: A whiskey comprised of 100% malted barley on the first Single Malt distillery in North America (which is Glenora, in Canada), aged for 21 years after which completed in WhistlePig Rye barrels. 18 barrels on this first manufacturing run had been produced, and all bottles are introduced as single barrel choices, numbered and encased in an ultra-luxe picket field.
It’s, hrmmm, nothing that Scottish single malt producers have something to be afraid of. The nostril appears partaking sufficient: Laden with maple syrup notes and cherry juice, then a punch from the barrel — recent lumberyard, and a clearly grassy, rye spice-driven high quality that folds some peppery underbrush notes into the expertise. That overt sweetness interprets on to the palate, shortly gumming issues up with extra maple syrup and an nearly saccharine high quality that’s paying homage to iced tea with method an excessive amount of Candy’N Low in it.
The extra time it spends in glass, the extra it jogs my memory of a spiced rum — cloves, ginger, cinnamon, and nutmeg all constructing steam. There’s a brown butter high quality right here that solely provides to the dessert-like high quality of the whiskey, then extra sugar, right here displaying as brown sugar combined with that unavoidable maple. Airtime helps to mood the rougher, peppery, woody qualities of the whiskey, for higher and for worse. On one hand, the spice of the rye end feels wildly misplaced with a fragile single malt, and time in glass certainly helps that blow off first. Alternatively, the underlying malt seems to be so candy that, as quickly because the rye is gone, you start to overlook it dearly. Possibly there’s a tipping level someplace within the center, however I by no means discovered it.
Do you have to drink this earlier than dessert, with it, or after? For $800, I don’t assume you must need to make so many rattling choices.
92 proof. Reviewed: Barrel #6.
B / $800 / whistlepigwhiskey.com
WhistlePig Single Malt 21 Years Previous The Beholden
$800
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