Spring Bay Apera Cask

Pressing on with Spring Bay number three, this time from an Apera Casking (Australian Sherry). N: No hiding it, this is an Apera Assault. Lots of big malty fruitcake, salty, caramel, slight tannic spice, pencil shavings, cloves and cinnamon. Beautiful control of sweet and savoury. Slight saltiness was unexpected but well received. P: Comes in creamy and tannic. A slightly warm astringent oak becomes bigger as the palate progresses. More malt but heading in the direction of mashed banana as a backdrop to the raisin, toffee, mocha and clove spice. The Apera is great, but the oak is muscles to the front and stops this from really shining. F: Medium. Plump raisin and caramel are the mouth filling presence that wants to stick around, but, it is the oak that again lingers. The spicy heat is slightly gingery at this point and there is a deft hint of barrel char. This one surprised me, i hadn’t expected such a powerful wood presence on this, but that was a heavy handed oaking, too much wood barged forward and really drowned out the nuance and delicacy of what is seemingly a cute little spirit and some lovely Apera flavours. Spring Bay dropped the ball a bit here. Shame, I really want to like this distillery. A splash of water tamed this too much and made it into a non-distinct and entirely uncharacterful dram that was more like weak raisin water than top shelf whisky. Distiller whisky taste #235 [Pictured here with a muddy-conglomerate from the Cretaceous Corallian Group of southern England. These conglomerates are filled with flint/chert pebbles and lots of microfiche teeth. The rock likely formed in a pre-existing submarine channel produced by submarine currents that were related to large scale movements as rotating fault blocks scooped downwards into basement rocks.] Spring Bay running scores: Bourbon Cask: 3.5/5 The Rheban: 3.25/5 Apera Cask: 3/5⠀ (I’m a numpty, I added this bottle into Distiller at 49% ABV it is infact, 46% ABV. Would be great if we could edit our bottle entries Distiller, or submit corrections! @mikael )