If Woodford Reserve 5-Malt Stouted Mash sounds much less just like the identify of a whiskey and extra just like the identify of a beer, that’s form of the purpose. The current launch (the seventeenth in Woodford’s ongoing “Grasp’s Assortment”) emphasizes the flavors discovered within the “distiller’s beer,” aka the fermented grain mash previous to its distillation (which for all intent and functions, is a beer).
It pours a darkish, cherrywood-red within the glass and has a nostril break up between earthy malt, dusty oak, and the within of a flourless chocolate brownie. Mingled between are additional aromas of darkish cherry, spice cake, and fig.
5-Malt Stouted Mash is wealthy and unctuous on the palate with starter notes that really feel pulled from a Black Forest Cake, with spices and cherry galore. These vacation spices and darkish fruit flavors do yeoman’s work slicing by way of the darkish chocolate brownie batter flavors that emerge on the heart, that are buttressed by a wall of dry oak. In the direction of the end we get into vanilla, caramelized sugar, and—shock—extra wooden, earlier than it offers approach to a robust, clear, spearmint that leaves you feeling as when you’ve simply brushed your enamel. Not less than till its final moments, that are performed off by an appreciated encore of malty chocolate.
Sure, it is a launch meant to seize the flavors of a so-called “distiller’s beer,” however don’t assume that its attraction is restricted to beer-lovers. Talking as somebody whose normal thought of a very good beer is a Miller Excessive Life, I loved the whiskey immensely, largely as a result of its powerfully wealthy and darkish chocolate notes and shocking spearmint end.
★★★★
Stats:
— 45.2% ABV
— $129.99
