According to Mackmyra’s product information, this has been matured in American and Swedish oak, both ex-bourbon and ex-sherry, and then finished in casks that have held Swedish wine made from birch sap.
Nose: Different. There’s definitely something of sap or resin here. I also get some heather and honey. A little sweet tobacco as well? With water it turns towards throat lozenges, with some mint, ammonium chloride and black pepper.
Palate: Honey on the palate as well, and resin. Vanilla and coriander. More woody with water, but the tobacco from the nose also makes an appearance.
Comments: Quite unique, and very, very good. An interesting nose and a complex, but well-balanced palate. There’s quite a bit of “But is it whisky?” over this, but when the result is this good I’m not sure that I care.
Myken: Myken posted pictures of their stills ready to ship from Spain on Facebook this week. The stills are looking good, and progress is also being made on the buildings at Myken. Follow their Facebook page to get news as they happen and see more pictures.
“The 300-litre and 700-litre spirit stills almost complete. Stands, valves, instruments, “onion” heads and lyne arms will not be mounted until they sit on the distillery floor.”“The 1000-litre wash still being hammered into shape after having the top and middle parts welded together.”
Since they have three stills on the way, of 300, 700 and 1000 liters capacity, I had to ask if they are planning on triple destillaton, but they are not. The smallest still is intended for gin production and possibly some experimentation. The whisky stills will therefore be a wash still of 1000 liters and a spirit still of 700 liters.
Travelling round Sweden this summer, we’d booked a time with most of the places we wanted to visit, but as Box did two tours a day all summer, we just showed up. The eldest was exceedingly happy about being left in the visitor centre with a pad, wifi access and 100 SEK to buy ice cream with. There aren’t many distilleries that have more child-friendly waiting areas. The youngest was relegated to dad’s back. Unforunately, she was not happy with this arrangement, so Arve missed most of the tour. One of the drawbacks of public tours is that the other visitors may not appreciate a screaming almost-two-year-old taking part. Oh, well.
Box from the waterfront
Box is obviously a popular tourist attraction, despite the maginificent weather our group consisted of 14 people. Anders Jonasson was our guide and he started the tour by relating the site’s history. The name Box is actually the name of the site, despite its un-Swedish twang. The site on the Ångerman river was named after a sawmill which was built here to take advantage of the timber being floated down the river. From the 1850ies they specialised in producing planks that were exported to England to make boxes, hence AB Box. After a fire in 1890 the site was sold and a steam powered power station was built here. It was finished in 1912 and the main building is what houses the distillery today. Steam power was soon superceeded by hydraulic power stations, but the building was in use until the sixties. It was then left to deteriorate for 30 years, until Mats de Vahl took action to save it from being torn down in 1991. Various initiatives have since been tested to keep the place alive, and it has served as an art gallery among other things. What was needed was an idea that could bring jobs and traffic, preferably a business that would not be sold and offshored once it was a success, and whisky productions seemed the perfect solution. Mats and his brother Per got eight other enthusiasts on board (including our tour guide)and founded Box Distillery. In 2010 the first spirit ran from the still.
Earlier this year Box released their first whisky, the three year old Pioneer. You can find my tasting notes here.
Following the history lesson we were equipped with blue shoe covers and entered the distillery proper. We said hello to the mill (not a Portheus) and got to taste the malt. The unpeated malt is Swedish, the peated malt used to be sourced from a Belgian maltster but is currently from Simpsons in Scotland. They have four malt barns with a capacity of 13 tonnes each.
At the mashtun we were told that they run two waters, 5000 liters and then 1300 liters, which results in 6300 liters of worts. Once in the washback (the washbacks are stainless steel) 5 kilos of Belgian dry yeast is added. A fruity and somewhat tart beer develops, with an ABV of around 7.5% after 48 hours, but they leave it for another 24 to take advantage of the lactic acid which forms towards the end and which they find gives a flavour profile they like.
The wash runs through the wash still and gives low wines of around 23% ABV. Then we come to the business end of things: The spirit still. They cut from head to heart at around 13 minutes for unpeated and 30 minutes for peated, and from heart to tail at 67% for unpeated and 60% for peated. One of the best parts of building your own distillery must be to get to play around with these details. Which yeast, how long to ferment for, when to cut? At Box they are left with around 320 liters of newmake, around 10% of the wash volume.
Both Box stills, wash still on the right and spirit still on the left.
The stills are from Forsyths, and they have a beautiful view of the Ångerman river. The still room may get warm when the stills are running, but as far as looks go you really can’t complain about working conditions at Box.
To ease the switch between peated and unpeated spirit and avoid “contamination” they have separate holding tanks, for a small distillery this seems to me to be a smart choice. A week’s production is five times 640 liters at 70% ABV, which is taken down to 63% ABV before being filled. Yearly production is between 150,000 and 160,000 liters filled into casks. The warehouses are not insulated at all, so the temperature varies between -30 and +30 degrees centigrade throughout the year. The warehouse we got to see contains about a year’s production, they have another, larger warehouse which will take around six years’ production, then they will have to build another one.
Two spirit receivers to separate peated and unpeated spirit
Casks owned by shareholders
The warehouse holds a lot of normal size casks as well
There is one cooper i Sweden
If the weather were less nice, you’d see the stills
Amazing chandelier in the visitor’s centre
The mill
A picture from the power station days hangs in the distillery
The mash tun
Anders Jonasson explains about the head, heart and tail
Nose: A bit rough, you can smell its age. Pear lollies and spruce. Water adds bay leaf and lemon, rosemary and some congeners. More water tames the congeners and brings out the malt.
Palate: There’s something undefinably young on the palate as well, but it’s a well-balanced dram, with black pepper and wood, a hint of acetone and something fruity. Plums, perhaps? Water emphasises the acetone, but also provides peach jelly and more wood. With quite a lot of water it blossoms. The pepper is still there, but otherwise I get vanilla ice cream with lemon balm.
Comments: It presents as somewhat too young, but with enough water it’s quite nice. I remeber the Försmak edition I tasted at TWF as less congener-affected, but then that was a peated version and peat does conceal rather a lot. I’ve poured another and let it stand for half an hour or so to breathe, and that has helped a lot. I doubt I’ll add water now, it’s nice as is. The overall judgement is promising rather than perfect, but then I guess the destillery would agree, they have, after all, released it as an early days edition.
Times are exciting when it comes to Nordic whisky. This series of blog posts (in English) will sum up some of the most important news on the subject. Looking for news in Norwegian? See Nyheter.
Sweden: Two Swedish distilleries launched exciting expressions in Systembolaget’s June release on the 5th. Spirit of Hven released a single cask bottling, Sankt Ibb, fat 11-217, distilled from barley grown just outside the distillery. With only 273 bottles available, it was gone before you could blink. More interesting, as far as I’m concerned, Box launched their first whisky bottling (their earlier releases have been less than three years old). Box Pioneer was available in a batch of 5000 bottles, with a maximum order per person of 2 bottles, but even so, it was all gone by the end of the first day. I have two bottles waiting for me, and will publish tasting notes in due time.
Sweden: Talking about Box, the distillery has its own mini-festival, and it’s taking place on the 28th of June. Box Whiskyfestival features loads of masterclasses, a chance to tour the distillery, food and drink at the bar, including a festival beer, several whisky importers with their wares and live music.
Norway: The news of a planned distillery at Myken, north of the Arctic Circle, has garnered interest worldwide. Among others: Canadian Eye on the Arctic, Barents Observer and The Spirits Business. The distillery plans are part of a greater initiative to breathe new life into the community of Myken, The Myken Project. If this sparks your interest, there is a Kickstarter project in search of funding to make a documentary about the whole thing.
The label is almost too informative, but here are all the details: First fill, American oak, 200 liter casks. Matured for 3.5 years. Malt: Pale barley, pale wheat, beach wood smoked barley. Cask number 9359.
And it contains wheat malt. Interesting.
Nose: It smells like whisky, and much less of congeners than a three year old can be expected to. A bit of lemon, a bit of malt, but a rather closed nose. With water it develops a somewhat surprising note of eucalyptus, with a persistent grain (as in dried barley and wheat, not as in “grain whisky”) character underneath.
Palate: My brain may be stuck on the ingredients list, but I actually think it tastes of driftwood and wheat husks. Water turns it sharper and brings out the eucalyptus from the nose, as well as some dry wood and a little newmakey roughness.
Comments: This is not bad at all. Arcus are not just playing at making whisky, that much is obvious. It would probably not stand up to a really good single malt, but then, at three, it can hardly be expected to. I’m looking forward to the next chapter.
Tomorrow, 28 September 2013, it’s open day at Fary Lochan, and the Danish distillery releases its first whisky. The very first bottle will be auctioned off, and stock holders have been able to pre-order. At 1500 DKK for 50 cl the whisky had better deliver…
We visited Fary Lochan in 2011. At that point they sold newmake and bottles with newmake and an added bit of charred Danish oak. The theory was that the spirit would mature in the bottle. The mini-stave is of a size calculated to the proportion of exposure in a cask, but the destillery manager, Jens-Erik Jørgensen, said that they had noticed that the “maturation” was much quicker than expected and they expected that the “whisky” would reach its peak some time during 2013 or 2014. We decanted 20 cl from our bottle before the summer, and we’re planning to decant another 10 or 20 before the end of the year. The dram I’m tasting tonight is from the bottle cotaining the “stave”.
Nose: Newmake, a little paint stripper. Water brings out spice and tart apples, but the paint stripper remains.
Palate: Weird. Newmake with oakiness. It tastes a bit like newly varnished wooden floors (not that I’ve actually tried to eat a newly varnished floor, mind you). Water releases a hint of spice.
Comments: The nose is just horrible. The palate is a little better, even if I’m sticking to the varnished floors. It also appears rather unbalanced, the wood is not well integrated with the spirit.
I remember the “clean” newmake as pretty good, so my conclusion is that though the idea of a stave in the bottle is an entertaining one, it does not work the way it was intended. We’ve got a bottle of the untarnished (I almost wrote “unvarnished”) newmake as well, but it’s in the cupboard that’s so child-proofed even we can’t open it (well, not without undoing the child-prrofing permanently). But once I can get at it I’ll write notes, and perhaps revisit this, too. We’ll put off decanting any more, I think, at this stage it’s not worth keeping.
Finished in ex-raspberry wine casks (“Vilkdhallon” means “wild raspberries”).
Nose: Alcohol. After a while peach and lemon, and quite a bit of vanilla.
Palate: The cask is present, even if I doubt “raspberry” would have been my first thought had I had this blind. I get more of a rhubarb, actually. And citrus. A lot of vannilin, so one suspects relatively new oak. In the background I find raspberry jam.
Comments: This stretches the concept of whisky, really, something it shares with a few other “finishes”. This does not make it a bad product, in fact it is rather nice, but it raises issues with branding.
Arve says it was much more raspberry-like from a newly opened bottle, my sample has had some air.
Nose: Vademecum. With a little water it softens into a more normal spicyness with a hint of menthol.
Palate: Vademecum on the palate as well, with underlying malt and some oaky bitterness.
Comments: Needs some time in the glass. First impression is much like with a lot of other non-Scottich whiskies, viz “it’s nice, but is it whisky?”, but with some water and air I’m beginning to think it’s pretty good. Not “Norvege douze points” good, but a very respectable first attempt.
Nose: Different. There’s definitely something of sap or resin here. I also get some heather and honey. A little sweet tobacco as well? With water it turns towards throat lozenges, with some mint, ammonium chloride and black pepper.
