Seven Seals Single Malt Port Wood Finish
Travel Distilled reviews Seven Seals Single Malt Port Wood Finish Whisky from the innovative Seven Seals Distillery in Stans near Lucerne in Switzerland.
Whisky from Switzerland? It’s not a country we associate with spirits of any particular kind, but you can make good spirits anywhere in the world these days – and people are doing. I recently tasted a superb rum from Guyana via Sweden, while Islay’s renowned whisky distillery, Bruichladdich, now sells more gin than whisky.
Seven Seals Whisky
Seven Seals Whisky is in a small and historic town called Stans, with a population of just over 8,000 people and located a short drive south of Lucerne in Switzerland. It seems an unlikely spot for someone who is at the cutting-edge of exploring whisky maturation, but the world of spirits is full of surprises. Seven Seals has developed its own patented technique to accelerate the maturation of whisky, including single malts, as well as experimenting with finishing whisky in different barrels, including in port and sherry casks.
Seven Seals Single Malt Port Wood Finish
This particular whisky combines several malts from the same distillery. A single malt is simply a whisky from one single distillery, and that’s what this is. If you blend whiskies from different distilleries you have a blended whisky, but if you blend whiskies from the same distillery you still have a single malt. The result is then finished in port casks and bottled at cask strength of 58.7% ABV (117.4 proof). It’s therefore potent stuff.
Tasting Seven Seals Single Malt Port Wood Finish
The whisky is an attractive dark golden colour, which leads you to believe there’s plenty of good stuff inside there. And there is. On the nose there’s an immediate nuttiness, followed by a sweet honey aroma, a bit of smoky peatiness, and though it’s complex it’s also quite restrained and subtle.
On the palate the subtlety goes out of the window and the alcohol strength really hits you. Everything that was on the palate is still there – honey, nutty, slightly smoky – plus a few more things besides, like gingerbread and some dried apricots. To my taste it was a little too strong to enjoy sipping neat, and throwing in an ice cube certainly helped. I can see mixologists getting excited by this, wondering what they can do with it to make some very tasty and very potent cocktails.
Buying Seven Seals Single Malt Port Wood Finish
You can buy this unusual whisky from the UK importers, Highfern, If you’re in the UK you can also buy it on Amazon.
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