Morris Tokay Barrel

Nose: Mild young oak, dried fruit, balsamic vinegar, roasted nuts, orange marmalade. It’s OK but shy when neat however with time the oak gains a more mature note. Adding water improves the nose a little. Palate: Sweet arrival with dried and stewed fruits but as it develops it quickly gains a huge flavour of treacle and golden syrup. This dense, rum-like sugary quality expands and eventually takes over the palate completely making it cloying and sticky. There is a hint of smokiness and the texture is good but this is a one-dimensional sugar-heavy experience. Finish: Medium/Short. Raisins soaked in golden syrup. The nose is OK but you need to let it rest for a while to open in the glass. The familiar young wood note I always get from Morris whisky is there but it’s less brash than I’ve encountered previously and it goes away when water is added. The nose is the best part of the experience here. It’s the palate where everything goes to hell as it becomes so overburdened with sweet, sickly sugars that it turns into a caricature of whisky. For a few seconds it’s appealing but it’s not long before you want a drink of water to clear away all that lingering sweetness. I had trouble finishing the tasting dram and I can’t imagine wanting another glass. For some unaccountable reason this was a highly praised release from Morris of Rutherglen and I was thinking of including it in a tasting event I’m hosting next month, but now having tried it I won’t be putting it on the card. It’s ham-fisted, overblown and a poor representation of what Australian distilleries are capable of in 2025. My initial instinct was to describe this as a “Poor” or “Inferior” whisky and give it less than 2 stars here, but to be fair the spirit is well made and it shows no intrusive faults from distillation. It’s the maturation that spoils it for me so I’ll be a little more generous. There is almost certainly a market for this, particularly among folks who don’t normally like whisky and would enjoy the enormous sweet character, but I'm not in that crew. Tasted from a 30ml sample. “Adequate” : 74/100 (2.25 stars)