08/04/2020 A few new things

Amongst the mountain of samples, I have accumulated a handful of new makes. They are always interesting, but I find them difficult to work into a line-up. Let us have some tonight.

Undisclosed New Make (~63%): a blind sample from Cthulhu knows where, with not even a name of someone I could ask for more information. I remember it is new make and I think I remember 63%, for some reason. How useful is this note going to be, eh? :-) Nose: plums and new leather shoes, butter beans, broad beans, peach skins, colour pencil (Caran d'Ache brown) and blue ink. It is a surprising combination, to say the least! The second sniff brings toasted oak, which, of course, makes no sense, since it has not seen wood. Plum is ever present, discreet, but faithful. _Decaying_ plum, even. Mouth: the plum is still here, and, although it is obviously strong enough to dissolve teeth in thirty-six seconds, it feels oddly velvety, at the same time. Older wood, lacquered, this time, plum in juice, and what amounts to red-chilli flakes in a yoghurt-based sauce, augmented with squashed peach. Finish: warming, discreet, it has the plum again, the lacquered wood too, and warm honey, golden and liquid. The plum is a little too bombastic to hide the youth of this dram, but one hopes that ageing will iron out the hiccoughs. Truth be told, it already feels like a whisky, albeit a young one. Good job, whoever made this! 6/10

London Distillery (unknown ABV): nose; how different is this!? It is all super-dry balsa wood, untreated pine planks, cigar boxes, even pine sap and browned pine needles. Freshly-printed newspapers, blotting paper, full of ink stains, pencil shavings, crushed pine cones on a dry forest floor, sumac, ground mace, papier mâché and an unlikely mix of peach and gherkin juices. Cooked cabbage, maybe? Some kind of boiled vegetable, in any case. Mouth: this one is soft and silky, with a foundation of ginger powder, ground mace and pine-y notes -- sawdust, cigar boxes, planks. Hard to accept that something that has not aged in wood can have that sort of wood notes, but hey! It has something less convincing in the back of the nose: something very gin-like. Juniper berries, probably. Finish: yes, it is very gin-like, this one, without being a gin, obviously. Botanicals, perhaps, but juniper berries, certainly, ground mace again (!), ginger, and, maybe, a wee drop of pine sap. Mirabelle plum, greengage and white peach also clock in, but it is juniper's show, tonight. 6/10 (Thanks for the sample, PS)

London Distillery (unknown ABV, unknown cask type): nose: different again. The first whiff is all vanilla custard and crushed shortbread. The second sniff is herbal and pine influenced. And it keeps shifting between those two profiles. One second, it is butterscotch, the next, it is dry thyme and pink peppercorns; pine-tree bark and needles or caramel flan and choux dough -- I do not know if I am having a gin or a grain! (Who said: "It's the same"?) It is a g(ra)in whisky! :-) Mouth: warm, mint-y vanilla custard -- and warm it certainly is, too! Cigar boxes, left in the the summer sun for hours, Tic Tac hard mints, liquorice root, baking shortbread, and still some pine sap, in the back, Gocce Pino style. The heat is not quite chilli-induced, rather pink peppercorn. Finish: the herbal bakery continues, with all sorts of mint-y, vanilla-based creams and choux dough, dried thyme, shortbread and cigar boxes, pine sap and custard, Gocce Pino filling and Suc des Vosges. Rather convincing, this. 7/10 (Thanks for the sample, PS)

(I will update details for the last two when PS can be bothered to tell me ;) )