Nose: Vanilla, sauna, orange marmelade. With water dried cranberries, black pepper, honey and lavender.
Palate: Wooden planks warmed by the sun, a bitter oak note, hints of dried fruits. Water opens for apricot and honey, and for toffee and a hint of liquorice on the finish.
Comments: Nice complexity, though it needs a little time in the glass to open properly. There is too much wood on both the nose and palate for my taste, but only just too much, so if you’re more into old whisky than I am, you should definitely check this one out.
Nose: A hint of barnyard on this one, too, but mostly quite clean smoke. Less fruity than its baby brother, but some pear peel and winter apples. The barnyard disappears entirely with water, and I’m left with smoke, iron, slate and a hint of sulfur.
Palate: Now we’re talking! Too much alchohol at this strength, but still smoke, roots and coriander seeds. A little fruit appears with water, but mostly there’s smoke and more smoke.
Comments: They could bottle this, but I think I will advise maturing it for another 9-13 years. It’s nice now, but it gets better.
Nose: Sulfur, apricots and recently extinguished match. With water I find more tropical fruits, “grønnsåpe” (a traditional soft soap) and ashes, and a barnyardy note.
Palate: Barnyard, ashes and apple peel. The most intense barnyard character luckily softens with water, and I’m left with red apples, peat and ashes.
Comments: I can’t remember the rather intense barnyard notes from the last time I tried this, but then that was in the warehouse at Lagavulin and I don’t know how clear-headed I was (not that I’d drunk much, neccessarily, but just being on Islay can turn your head, you know). Once it’s softened on the palate after a sufficent amount of water has been added, this is a pretty good dram, but not so good that I wouldn’t rather have them mature it for a few years. I’ve tasted far better newmake (even this week just gone) considered from a “drinking it as it is” point of view.
In order to really test the sample of Myken newmake, I lined up two other newmakes to try in parallel. One was not even a sample, Mackmyra Vit Hund is available at Systembolaget in Sweden for 319 SEK for 50 cl bottle. The other spirit I let Myken test its mettle against was a sample of Glenburgie newmake. To my delight (yes, I will happily admit to rooting for the Myken project) the sample from Myken stood its own. The Mackmyra is perhaps more polished, but it’s also a product meant to be sold and drunk as is. The Myken spirit is intended for maturation (so is most of the spirit off the still at Mackmyra, of course, but I suspect they chose the batches for Vit Hund with care). The Glenburgien had a pleasant nose, but was unfortunately undrinkable once water was added, and that’s simply not good enough in this company.
But enough waffle, here are my impressions of the Myken newmake:
Nose: Malt, milk chocolate and wet concrete. With water sulfur emerges, but also green grapes and apples and Wasa Husmann crackerbread.
Palate: Lemon, concrete, malt and a chemical pine needle character. A little sharper with water, but the malt/barley character is also emphasised.
Comments: Pretty good, on the whole. Less fruity than the other two, but it tastes nice enough to leave me wanting more. The impression of concrete interests me (it’s an aroma I rather like), and I’ll be interested to see if it follows through in the maturation.
Nose: Malt first and foremost. Citrus and Haribo peaches, congeners in appropriate amounts. With water comes orange peel and orange blossom. Grilled chicken breast and apricot chutney.
Palate: Malt, a hint of sulfur, yellow apples. With water the malt turns doughy, and I get strong associations to a “Full Scottish Breakfast” without managing to pinpoint why… White pudding, perhaps? Or haggis?
Comments: Quite my cup of tea. There’d be no point in maturing this, except it results in another product entirely and so why not have the best of both worlds?
Distilled 27 Juli 2007, 50 ppm in the malt, matured in an ex-bourbon cask, bottled 26 February 2008.
Nose: Railway sleepers and rusty iron. Apple sauce, apricots and cucumber. With water jasmine and cardamom.
Palate: Soot-covered iron construction. More ashy with water, with an underlying fruitiness.
Comments: Where can I get a proper bottle rather than this puny 5 cl? Makes me wonder what the point is to years of maturation, when this is perfectly delightful as is.
In honour of St. David’s Day, which falls on March 1st every year, I’ve opened a bottle of whisky from Penderyn. It’s from the very first batch that was commercially available, and is no age statement, finished in Madeira casks.
Nose: Tinned peaches, honey, vanilla and spices. The spices turn towards cumin with water, and I find some yellow apples, otherwise the honey is emphasised.
Palate: Heather honey, fruit chutney, vanilla and cinnamon. A little bitterness with water, but otherwise not much difference.
Comments: I’ve sort of lost sight of Penderyn lately, it’s not available in the Nordics, so we don’t hear much about it. But this is a very drinkable “baby” (it’s NAS, but I seem to remember it being not much more than three when it was bottled around ten years ago), a pleasant sipping whisky. I am denitely taking note to try some of the more recent, older bottlings from Penderyn if a chance offers.
Nose: Cinese cabbage (that’s a first), fruity, but with some strange fruits, like carambola and kumquat. Green apples and malt. With water it turns tarter and balances on a knife’s edge between fresh and …silo? Carbonated orange juice. A little mint, I get toothpaste. After a while in the glass it suddenly smells of Bamsemums (chocolate covered marshmallowy things).
Palate: Green apples and apple peel, congeners, malt and red brick. With water it develops an unpleasant, bitter note.
Comments: Exceptionally active nose, and it’s mostly all good. Unfortunately the taste collapses with water added, and it becomes undrinkable (and no, you cannot drink newmake without adding water. Sip and taste, yes, drink, no).
Despite some confusion regarding the locations of both Tevsjö and Gammelstilla, we were confident that we could find Mackmyra, having passed this sign the day before:
So we took the exit for Hagaström, and passed Mackmyra without noticing it at all… Once we realised we’d gone too far and turned around, it was very easy to spot the distillery, but from the direction we had come Mackmyra Whiskyby was hidden behind some trees.
We had an appointment with Angela D’Orazio, Master Blender at Mackmyra, whom we have both met before. I attended her masterclass at one of the first Oslo Whiskyfestival where she presented Mackmyra from small casks (a long time before even Preludium was released). Since Mackmyra has a strict 15 years and over age restriction on their tours, we had to convince Angela to do two tours, one with each of us adults, while the other waited outside with the kids (passing time picking blueberries, which the woods around Mackmyra had plenty of). Luckily she agreed.
I was first, and we started the tour in the “skogslager” – the wood warehouse – which has been designed to fit into the surroundings with grass on the roof. Skogslageret is Mackmyra’s most recent warehouse, and they are continuously expanding it, adding a new module for every 1000 casks.
Small casks are rather appealing, I, for one, am always tempted to just grab one and make off with it…
After the warehouse we had a look at the “rökanläggningen” – the “smokery” – which has been built in an old shipping container. That it works is evident when tasting the Mackmyra Svensk Rök, for example.
Finally, it was time for the actual distillery, and this was something we’d been looking foreward to. It’s always exciting to see a new (to us) distillery from the inside, but Mackmyra is rather special, being built as a gravitational plant. The most obvious effect of which is that the distillery building is TALL.
We started the tour by donning grey lab coats and climbing to the top floor. The top floor has a bit of a view.
A malt elevator brings the malt to the top of the building, and it is then dropped into the mill, which is the first part of the process that happens inside the skyscraper.
After milling, the grist “falls” one floor to the mashtun, where water is added and worts extracted. The worts run down another floor, to the washbacks, yeast is added and worts ferment into wash. And then the fun begins. Mackmyra have two pretty copper potstills of the traditional type.
WashstillSpiritstill
Here, or rather on the floor below the platform from where I took the pictures of the stills, we find another thing that is unique for Mackmyra (as far as I know). The old nordic term for “the thing the spirit runs through for visual inspection”, the spirit safe, is “spritklokke” (literally “spirit bell jar”). And spirit bell jars are exactly what we find at Mackmyra.
At this point I was sorely tempted to rub my hands together and cackle “Ahahahahaaa” in a mad scientisty way, the lab coat didn’t help at all.
Shortly after our visit I came across an archive image from Romedal brenneri, of their “spritklokke”. It’s available online at Digitalt museum.
Had we been on holiday without children, we’d have booked a dinner and tasting in the restaurant at Mackmyra. As it was we were left to drool a bit at the bar.
Since I don’t drive I got to have a quick couple of tastes, but the younger elements of our party were getting increasingly restless, so I had to accept that that was all I would get. I’ve since been able to try Mackmyra Midnattsol again in better conditions, but here are my quick impressions of two others:
Mackmyra Moment Bärnsten (bottle number 1550 of 1550…!) 49.8% had orange peel, oak, thyme and a hint of smoke on the nose. It tasted of oak, orange peel and dark chocolate.
Mackmyra Moment Malström 46.4% had oak, cold rock and ashes on the nose, and tasted slightly bitter, with some congeners (of the good sort), honey, fruit and ashes.
I would happily have poured a sizeable dram of either of them and hidden myself away in a corner to enjoy it, but had to say nicely thank you for the tour and stuff the family into the car for the next leg of our Tour de Suède (it was our last morning in the Gävle area).
