Bimber Ex-Bourbon Batch No. 2

From the classic whisky expressions of Johnny Walker I now go in a completely different and novel direction: Bimber. The Bimber Distillery is located in London, England. Bimber was founded in 2016 with the very first Bimber liquids going down on the 26th May 2016. Three years later 1000 bottles were released and sold out in under three hours. Bimber sources barley from a single farm. Malts and mashes by hand, ferments the wart in their own hand crafted wash backs for seven days, and focuses mainly on re-charred oak and bourbon barrels with a few sherry and port casks thrown in for good measure. The word Bimber is Polish for Moonshine, reflecting the roots of the Polish founder and distiller Dariusz Plazewski. Starting off my little series on Bimber is this second batch of ex Bourbon cask (I believe they are now up to batch number 3). Batch 2 was released in October 2020 and is a natural colour, non chill filtered expression limited to 2950 bottles. I do not know the age statement for this juice. I’ve left this sitting for about 20 minutes and am ready to dive in. N: Creamy and vanilla laden thickness rushes out of the glass and is backed by soft peaches and cream, an almost cream soda like mixture of stone fruit and confectioners custard. SO. MUCH. BUTTER! The oak is soft with gentle pepperiness. There is a slightly sickly background note of fresh grass mixed with a little grist that I guess reveals the young age of this whisky. Simple, very simple. But what is there it delivers with weight and purpose. P: Dry and tingly approach. A building peppery heat that is full of sawn wood and slightly oats-mealy grain. A little banana and coconut, milk and honey. Its difficult to wrangle as the peppery and woody spices take hold with increasing presence. F: Both short and long. The finish is initially dried banana chips, honey and sawdust, gone quickly. What then remains is progressively more peppery heat and dryness. A good hit of water allows the banana and coconut to become more prominent and very much tempers the dryness and the peppery heat. But the peaches and cream nose, the milk and honey palate and flavourful elements of finish are lost. This is an undeniably young whisky, and there are some quite surprising elements in the early profile that remind me of cream sodas and boiled fruit & cream sweets that, with time, if not lost to a clearly strong oak character will be really quite delicious. At this point though, the balance isn’t there. Moonshine indeed. For a 52.2% whisky this is far too young and likely needs at least eight years to come together. There is promise of things to come though… [Pictured here with a Western Australian icon: 670 million year old Zebra Rock. This stuff is found in one remote little area in the far north of Western Australia near the famous Lake Argyle. A fine grained claystone Zebra Rock takes it striking patterns from concentrations of iron oxide whose distribution is controlled by some truly wonderful crystal physics: liquid crystal phases, the iron oxide flows like a liquid but has crystallographically (solid) controlled orientations further controlled by magnetic fields and the platy orientations of the clay minerals surrounding them.] Distiller whisky taste #151

Very good. Not great.