Continuing with my concentrated exploration of Starward distillery I’ve pulled out Starward Dolce (coming from the Italian word for sweet), a one-off limited release made with Australian malted barley and brewer’s yeast, before being matured in Australian red wine barrels. The spirit is then transferred to dessert wine barrels, with the wine made in the Sicilian style. A sweeter take on Starward’s classic wine-cask spirit. N: Deep and sweet with dark fruits initially and drifting into a warmer Spanish hot chocolate and toasty brown sugar. Very gentle cinnamon and nutmeg. All in, this is like a black forrest chocolate gateaux warmed up and poured into a mug. P: Bold and quite astringent. Dark plum, strawberries, cherry coke, bitter dark chocolate, soft marshmallow. Quite a lot going on in here in a big, booming way, but the astringency cuts things off at the knees with every sip. F: Long. But bad long, this is very astringent and with something of a building harshness. The cherry cola and marshmallow hang around but don’t do a lot to save the finish. Interesting. Far from what I expected. ‘Dolce’ invoked images of sickly sweet after dinner wines, summery brightness, and the colour pink. Instead, drying and tannic, somewhat wintery and moody, and the colour maroon. The nose is whats best, a rich black forest hot chocolate, but everything trends down from there. The astringency gets in the way of the good stuff just as it gets going. Would have been very fun to have the cherry cola and marshmallow build to centre stage, but sadly not. Price is for 500 ml bottle. Distiller whisky taste #203 [Pictured here with another shooting star for Starward. This little nugget is a piece of the Nantan Meteorite that fell near the city of Nantan in China, likely in the year 1516. The meteorite exploded in the atmosphere scattering fragments across and areas of 8x28 km. To date 9.5 tonnes of the meteorite have been recovered. This piece weighs 0.485 grams. The fireball this would have made in the sky as it burnt up and exploded would have been incredibly sweet to see.] Starward running scores: Fortis: 3.25/5 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 Small Batch, Hungarian Oak: 3/5