Starward Smoke & Mirrors Single Barrel Oak Barrel Exclusive

Originally reviewed on January 20, 2021 on a different listing. Review moved to this listing August 21, 2023. Whisky Tasting : The Oak Barrel, Sydney, 19 January 2021. Whisky #4 Nose: A full, richly sweet initial nose. Over-ripe tropical fruit, stewed stone-fruits, sherry, golden syrup. There is an aroma of oak cask which is neither the pencil-shavings of a young cask nor the smell of an old one. It’s a pleasantly fresh oak quality but there is just a trace of wet cardboard. Palate: Oily and sweet arrival with big stewed fruit flavours. A similar theme to the nose with an added spice component – ginger, hot cinnamon, dried orange rind, a pinch of chilli – but it’s not objectionably hot. There are some drying tannins and the same odd cardboard note apparent on the nose is present. Finish: Medium/long. Warming, tannic, spicy. A big, expressive whisky that is just a fraction too hot and tight to be enjoyable at cask strength. I thought it was greatly improved by a dash of water and really woke up when reduced to around 50% abv. This seemed to revive a lot of slumbering youthful aromas and flavours. The only fault I found was the curious wet cardboard or chipboard presence. It’s not intense enough to be intrusive, but you definitely sense it lurking about. I’m uncertain of its origin but it’s probably from one of the casks as it was not quite the same as the feinty note you get from a cut that was too wide. This expression was the result of a collaboration between The Oak Barrel in Sydney and New World Distillers in Melbourne and was unofficially dubbed the “Smoke & Mirrors” bottling (this is apparently a slang term at the distillery for a weird-and-wonderful experimental vatting). It was a combination of five small sherry casks. Two were first-fill ex-apera (Australian sherry) quarter casks that were just on 5 years old. Two more were second-fill ex-apera quarter casks that had matured for 9 years, and the last was an ex-PX sherry quarter cask that was just over 10 years old. In the Melbourne climate the influence of these small 50 litre casks would have been quite intense – probably the equivalent of twice the maturation time in Scotland. The quarter casks were vatted into barrel #109, a 200 litre ex-sherry barrel, and married for 8 months. An interesting whisky. “Good” : 83/100 (3.5 stars)

The Oak Barrel is a fairly elite independent liquor specialist shop in Sydney, Australia first established in 1956. Holding a fair bit of sway in the Australian whisky scene they get a fair few bottle shop exclusives. I looked this up on their website and my word it sounds like peddling snake oil… “This comes from five separate 50 litre casks, all deemed too unique – or exciting – to blend away into the core releases they were intended for. They were vatted together into a 200-litre barrel (#109) for eight months. Amongst those five casks were two first fill apera, two second-fill apera and one Pedro Ximenez barrel. The first fill aperas are the youngest, coming in at five years old. The youngest spirit here was distilled 28 August 2015. The second-fill aperas were distilled significantly earlier and would now be nine-and-a-half years old [in 2020]. The PX cask is the earliest fill of the bunch, having been distilled 1 November 2010. This barrel was bottled in the last week of October 2020, just days before that spirit would have turned ten.” For my Australian audience (of one, @cascode ) Dave Withers was the whisky expert at the Oak Barrel, worked closely with Dave Vitale of Starward to set up their ‘Projects’ then jumped ship to set up the dizzying complexity of Archie Rose. I understand Starwards premise so much better now. Bottled at 57.5% ABV there were 250 bottles at AUD$199 a pop. N: In the words of Matthew McConaughey, alright alright alright. Big, bold. Packed with brown sugar toffee, dark old mellow oak tannin, malty toast and nuttiness, leathery opulence and dark red figs, cherries and brighter banana and strawberry. This is a smorgasbord nose of thick heavy oomph. No hint at all of the 57.5% ABV. Well played. P: Full bodied, soft, creamy… moorish. So very dark, tannic spices roll and wrap with a hint of stone fruit sweetness and orange zest before serving up some biscuity malt, deep dark dried fruits and some dark bitter marmalade. F: Long. A little too bitter perhaps the wood maybe overdone, but a nice menthol type lift keeps it in check and supports the fading clove and pepper spice. Water stretches everything out, reveals a vinegar sourness and acidity to the nose, adds more caramel to the palate and curbs the bitterness for a short spell before it returns in the late finish. The nose here is very reminiscent of the 10th Anniversary bottling. Indulgent richness with a leathery whip of precision texture and balance. The palate was good and again, comparable to the 10th anniversary bottle, but perhaps lacking int he nuttiness and slight acidity that was present in that one. A bit better than good though. The finish stands on its own, bitterness is a standout trait that hasn’t been present in the nineteen Starwards and counting so far (if I recall correctly). It’s not the best finish, but its different, and holds interest; and thats not a bad thing here. Overall this was pretty darn good, some things were done excellently to outstandingly (the nose), others just a solid showing (palate), and then some middle of the road interesting but not necessarily good aspects (finish). These variable characteristics make it hard to place. It’s punchy, but not as refined as the 10th and 15th anniversary editions (4.25, 4.5), not as delicate and nuanced as the chardonnay (4). I think this sits alongside the Octave Barrels as a good to excellent independent bottling that none of us will likely ever own or taste again. Distiller whisky taste #222 [Pictured here with a rather pretty Chalcopyrite from Morocco. Chalcopyrite is a copper iron sulphide mineral. Fools gold with added copper. Typically formed through volcanic-hydrothermal fluid processes that can completely replace and overprint the original rocks the eventual ore is found in. A beautiful yellow-gold colour chalcopyrite tarnishes to a very cool ‘peacock’ ore with purple-blue iridescence.] Starward running scores Nova: 3/5 Fortis: 3.25/5 Solera: 3.75/5 10th Anniversary: 4.25/5 Vitalis 15th Anniversary: 4.5/5 Whisky Club Exclusive, Maple Cask: 2/5 Whisky Club Exclusive, Cognac Cask: 3.5/5 Projects, Octave Barrels: 3.75/5 Projects, Dolce: 2.25/5 Projects, Bourbon Cask: 3.5/5 Projects, Tawny #2: 3.5/5 Projects, UnExpeated: 3.75/5 Projects, Peated: 2.75/5 Small Batch, Cherry Wood Smoked: 2/5 Small Batch, Mesquite Wood Smoked: 2/5 Small Batch, Hungarian Oak: 3/5 Small Batch, Sticky Toffee Apple: 3.25/5 Small Batch, Chardonnay: 4/5 Whisky Loot Single Barrel Single Malt Exclusive: 3.5/5 Smoke & Mirrors Single Cask Oak Barrel Exclusive: 3.75/5