Smoky wedding is the stand out so far from five Furneaux Distillery liquids. To finish then, this sixth tasting is from one of only 180 bottles of a distillers cut of the Smoky Wedding bottled at a higher ABV of 58%. “When crafting our latest bottling of Smoky Wedding Single Malt, we faced a delightful dilemma: eight mature 50-litre American Oak Ex Bourbon casks. Among them, two stood out.” N: Not as deep as the regular smoky wedding and a little harsh from the higher ABV. The biscuity malt is there but it is slightly toastier and with more butter. White fruits are much more peachy now and the peat is more apparent as a heavier dampness. Some of the brine is lost and the lighter floral note is all but gone I think. P: astringent, warm, nutty again but with a fuller body. Everything has been dialled up, the tannic spice is much more apparent and the barley is much weightier, almost meaty. Metallic mineralic brine is back and helps bring out the toasty buttery malt along with wood spice. Juicy fruit is again, more peachy now but also creamy, peach cream soda maybe?. I think a little of the delicacy and nuance of the two peats is lost at the higher ABV, there isn’t the same contrast of darker heavier Scotland and lighter perfumed Tasmania. F: Long. Plenty of wood spice, cool briny ash, beach pebbles, and a heavy oily texture remains. “unadulterated by the addition of water. Just a touch of dilution brought out the best rich and buttery profile of this whisky” The distillers were not wrong. The higher ABV definitely showed off the buttery side of things. But at great detriment to all the glorious delicacy of the Tasmanian peat and carefully cut distillate. Yeah; this is perfectly fine; it’s a heavy malt forward and nicely peated island/Islay type of dram; but distillers cuts are supposed to be special, and additive. This higher proof distillers cut is a disservice to the elegance that I think Furneaux nailed the first time round. Final Furneaux thoughts? They seem to be doing things the right way and have a great sense of terroir and story telling. If they take their time and settle on some core, repeat, caskings and bottlings then a serious contender will rise from the antipodes. Distiller whisky taste #280 [Pictured here with as good a representation of Tasmania as is possible in rock form. This is a lump of dolerite from Mt Wellington just outside the Tassie capital Hobart. This dolerite is a volcanic igneous rock that formed 175 million years ago when Gondwana broke apart. As the continent rifted massive volumes of dolerite magma intruded through the crust to form what is now the largest exposure of dolerite in the world; 30,000 km2 and a volume of 15,000 km3]. Furneaux Distillery Running Scores Flinders Island Peated American Oak Ex-Bourbon: 3.5/5 Flinders Island Peated Double Cask: 3.25/5 Sawyers Bay Unpeated Double Oak: 2.75/5 Sawyers Bay Unpeated Refill (Peated) Cask: 4/5 Smoky Wedding Peated Bourbon Cask: 4/5 Smoky Wedding Distillers Cut: 3.75/5