November sees the release of two new Gjoleid bottlings at Vinmonopolet (not available from other retailers, as far as I know) I should have had tasting notes for both to share, but due to a mix-up I’ve only had the chance to taste the one they’ve named “Blindpassasjeren” (The Stowaway). It has matured in an ex-sherry cask for “almost five years”, but the unusual thing about it is that before the malt spirit was filled into this cask it had held aquavit for a period, which it is natural to expect will have had some influence on the whisky. The cask has also been walkabout (or sailabout, rather) along with the Linje Aquavit, and has crossed the equator twice between February and June this year.
Nose: Cumin, some newmake character, oaky sweetness. Towards aniseed with water, and aquavit-notes, but the malty spirit is still discernable beneath it all.
Palate: A light note of cumin, clear oak notes, the relatively high ABV is obvious. With water the taste also turns to aniseed.
Comments: Very easy drinking, and quite “aquavit-like”. A nice combination of the two types of spirit, who’d have thought aquavit-cask would be a success? I’m definitely bagging a bottle or two come November.
This spirit has matured for five months in a 10 litre cask of Hungarian oak.
Nose: A fair amount of congeners, vanilla, a little cinnamon and apricots. It turns more towards the vegetal with water, I still find cinnamon, but also some black pepper.
Palate: Rice pudding with cinnamon and sugar. Congeners as well. Rougher with water, but the cinnamon still dominates.
Comments: Seems very young, but then it is. The cinnamon is from the oak, I suppose. It’s a bit over the top, really. Less congeners on the nose would have been better, as it is, I rather like it, but not so much that I regret it being unavailable to purchase.
This edition of Preludium is from Mackmyra’s smoked newmake variety that has matured in ex sherry casks.
Nose: Malt, slight smokey character and liquorice. Water brings out fruit, both fresh tropical and something dried, possibly apricots. A somewhat sharp, young off-note is also present.
Palate: Liquorice and a slight smokiness, but also a somewhat woolly, murky “chemical” feel. With water the liquorice is still present, but also raisins and some congeners.
Comments: This is probably the best Preludium I’ve tasted, though that is not neccessarily saying much as my impression of the series as a whole is not very good (though I AM a fan of much of what Mackmyra has released in later years). Smoke and sherry does a lot to conceal any off-notes, so that even though this also has a “young and unfinished” feel, it’s far from undrinkable.
Exactly two weeks ago I was at Myken to take part in the official opening ceremony for the distillery. It was an experience of a life-time, and it was clear that not only do the Myken gang “with freids” have a star-studded tea, but even the weather gods are rooting for Myken. Brilliant sunshine and blue skies are hardly something you can bank on in this country, but that’s what met us on arrival last Tuesday.
It’s possible to note with a smile that the weather gods had a role to play earlier in Myken’s history as well, as it was when they became stuck on the island through bad weather that Roar and Trude – to of the main forces behind the distillery – fell in love with Myken.
I arrived back home after 36 hours with close on 600 pictures and life-long memories, and whether you want me to or not I will be sharing some of them over the next few weeks. Let’s start with the most important part: A tour of the distillery.
Myken Distillery at sunset
Even though the distillery building is fairly anonymous compared to other disitilleries, it’s not exactly hard to find. Myken is not big. In fact, all distances logged on the local signpost are measured in meters, and the number of buildings overall is limited. As the old, temporary signage for the distillery has now been replaced by a new sign with Metric Designs shiny new logo design, it’s even easier to find the right building. It used to be a processing plant for fish, now it contains Myken Distillery on the ground floor and Bruket bord & bar, a restaurant, above it.
The mayor of Rødøy kommune, Olav Terje Hoff, unveils the new distillery sign.
The most important question coming to mind when you see Myken and are told that they distill whisky there should be: “But where do they get their water from?” The answer is a desalting plant which produces clean, clear drinking water from sea water.
Old milk tanks serving as washbacks.
Myken Distillery is a microdistillery and will remain so in the foreseeable future. Most of the processes are unusually dependent on manual input, and the equipent is hardly in the same league as the big players in Scotland. The mashtun is a repurposed plastic tank with an added mesh bottom, the washbacks are old milk tanks, which are available to purchase for the not-so-princely sum of 1 NOK per liter capacity. In fact it’s substantially more expensive to transport them to Myken than to purchase them in the first place.
Stills from Hoga Stills in Spain.
The stills are new and purpose built from copper, but with a somewhat unfamiliar shape if you are used to Scottish stills. This is because they are made in Spain by Hoga Stills Co. The possibility of purchasing stills from Scotland was investigated, but new stills from Forsyth’s would not only have been about five times more expensive, they also had an expected delivery date in couple of years time. As Hoga could deliver within a few months, the choice was made simple for our eager distiller-wannabees. The stills are fired with gas, through gas-powered paella-pans, also from Spain, naturally.
The first spirit was distilled at Myken in December 2014, and throughout 2015 they’ve kept up a steady pace, heading for a total production this year of 5,000 liters. With the equipment thay now have, they expect to be able to increase annual output to a maximum of 15,000 liters over the next few years. In addition they are contemplating investing in another pair of stills, which would put the total capacity at 30,000 liters. Note: Numbers are for actual liters put into cask, not pure alchohol.
Mykens version of a spirit safe.
Despite the manual processes (and technical challenges) the method should be familiar to anyone familiar with Scottish distilleries. The malt has so far come from Weyermann in Germany, and up until two months ago the 125 kilos Myken use per mash were milled on what can only be descriped as a home brewer’s mill (though powered by drill, not hand cranked). A somewhat more industrial version is now in place. The mashtun, as mentioned, is a converted plastic tank. About 700 liters of worts is produced per mash, with 500 liters of water going in at 64-65° C and then a second water of 200 liters at 80° C. The wort is transported to the washbacks by the simple expedient of lifting the whole mashtun with a forklift and transporting it to the washback so the worts can drain off straight in. Up until two months ago, things were not so simple and the worts had to be carried by hand in ten litre buckets from the mashtun to the washback…
The mashtun at Myken.
Myken use dry distillers yeast and the wash is left to ferment on average 3-4 days, but sometimes over a week if that’s what fits the schedule. The resulting wash ends at around 7% abv.
700 liters of wash are run through the washstill, and out come around 200 liters of low wines at 24 % abv. Two runs off the washstill are combined in the low wines tank to feed the spirit still with 400 liters.
Are you quite sure this is the correct tank and bucket?
So 400 liters of low wine are distilled, the head, heart and tail are collected in metal buckets and poured, very manually, into the correct receptacle. Roar told us that the steps up to the spirit receiver were useful in filling the function “time to consider whether this is the correct tank”, since, should someone pour head or tail in there the whole batch would be ruined. Of course it could be redistilled, but then you’d have triple distilled spirits, and something quite unlike the rest of the production. No one has so far made that mistake. After all that they are left with around 100 liters of newmake.
Experimental casks of 5-10 liters.
When they have collected sufficient amounts of newmake it is filled into casks. For experimental purposes they have a variety ofminiature casks of five to ten liters to get an early indication of how the spirit is likely to mature. If you’ve been to a whisky festival and had Myken spirit with some colour to it, it will have been from one of these. With so much wood to spirit interaction we are talking weeks rather than months or years for the spirit to “mature”. It’s not the same as a ten year maturation in proper casks, of course, or we’d likely see retailers’ shelves bulging with “speed matured whisky”, but it does give an indication of how various wood types will interact with the distinct Myken spirit..
Slowly but surely the Myken warehouse is getting filled.
Most of the production goes into ex bourbon barrels (most of them have been fro Maker’s Mark, lately from Wild Turkey), and some goes into 40 liter casks rebuilt from barrels by Thorslund cooperage in Sweden. These smaller casks are open to investors, so if you like you can own your own special Myken cask, if you want more details I published those a while ago.
Lille Gadegaard is a vineyard, but in 2005 they also started distilling malt whisky. The spirit is matured in french oak casks that have been used for maturing the vineyard’s red wine first.
Nose: Relatively rough, with oaky notes and acetone. With water burnt rubber takes over the nose and blocks any other aromas.
Palate: Tobacco, some acetone, oak and burnt rubber. Raisins or other dried fruits on the finish. Hardly any development with water.
Comments: This is an example of how wrong you can go with “speed maturation”, this is both too young (which the nose proclaims loudly) and at the same time the cask influence is too heavy. I think the spirit in itself is pretty decent, but it’s hard to tell, because it’s not been given the chance to shine. The taste is better than the nose in this one, the tobacco saves it from being totally undrinkable.
Nose: Singed juniper wood and juniper berries. Lemon. Vanilla and coffee, and spices; chai? More of everything with water, but also chalk and mineral notes.
Palate: A lot. Let’s see: Immediately a little burnt rubber and liquorice, then herbs and after a while oak planks and one the finish coffee. The chalk makes and appearance on the palate as well with water.
Comments: I’ve poured a The Challenger in another glass to compare the two, and I still find Challenger closed on the nose. Explorer has more of a full in-your-face-nose. But they are both good. Very good, in fact. In six months the fourth and last bottling of The Early Days Collection will be released. I will be ready and waiting on the date of release, and once I’ve got it I will, of course, have a quadrupel paralell tasting. I’m already looking forward to it.
Nose: Menthol and Knott (a sort of sweet with mint and liquorice flavours). Vanilla and malt, and green wood. More (sharp) herbs with water, but water also brings out the (very) young character of the whisky.
Palate: Young malt spirit. Congeners and malt. Some menthol and something pussy willowish. A little more bitterness with water, vanilla bitterness and dry oak. With even more water I get black tea.
Comments: Too young. Since I actually kind of like newmake that doesn’t necessarily scare me off, but as “whisky” this is too unfinished even for me. But it’s fun to keep an eye on the progress of the Norwegian distilleries, and I’m kicking myself for failing to purchase a bottle of Audny Series 2.
I poured a dram of the Series 1 to compare them, and can report that it has developed somewhat in a half-full bottle. The nose is now more toffeeish, and has improved, I think, whereas the palate is sharper and immediately somewhat unpleasant.
Mackmyra Midvinter has been finished in Bordeaux casks, glühwine casks and sherry casks. Which leads me to expect mulled wine, really. We’ll see.
Mackmyra spirit still
Nose: It definitely smells of herbs, and herb schnaps. Not quite Underberg, rather a sweeter version. Sweetness and Christmas spices, and a hint of toothpaste. There’s this odd (to me) toothpaste variety with cinnamon flavour; that’s what this smells like! More of that with water. With a lot of water some fresh fruit emerges, pears, perhaps?
Palate: Toothpaste with cinnamon flavour is a pretty accurate description of the palate as well. Cloves and other Christmas spices also appear. Bitterness, oak and cloves on the finish. Water makes no noticeable difference.
Comments: This is just plain weird. It’s not unpleasant as such, but it’s not “whisky”, and not quite good enough to convince me not to care.
In contrast with the last couple of Mackmyras this one is not “förlagrad” (pre-matured). When the cask was filled on 28 May 2007 and the bottle filled on 15 November 2011 we’re talking about a straigh forward four year old whisky. On the other hand, it’s been matured in a 30 litre ex-sherry cask, which should give it a lot more cask influence than a four-year-old from a full size cask.
Nose: Red berries, dried cranberries, vanilla and something port-like. With water it acquires a hint of liquorice, but also more fruit.
Palate: Sherry, and raisins with a hint of cardboard. With water the cardboard transforms into bread dough, other than that the main impression is “sherry”.
Comments: Decent, but nothing more. Better on the nose than the palate.
