cascode
The Grove Distillery Cream Sherry Cask Whiskey
Single Malt — Australia
Reviewed
January 13, 2020
Nose: Rotting fruit, especially bananas, undertones of sherry and wood. There are faint diesel and brown sugar notes.
Palate: Sweet, woody and tobacco on the arrival. There are strange plastic and fruit flavours as it develops, with sweetness eventually coming to the fore. There are also definite orange and apricot notes. The texture is OK but there is an overall sensation of something synthetic.
Finish: Medium. It finishes a little sour and fruity, with an afterthought of sherry.
I really wasn't sure what to make of this. @Soba45 sent me the tasting sample and he is certain that it is aged for a single day, but I could not find any information about it online. It's curious because to be legally sold as "whisky" in Australia the spirit must be, among other things, at least 2 years old. All the examples of Grove whisky I could find on the internet say they are aged for 2 or 3 years.
Anyway, regardless of its origins it did not make a good impression and I frankly thought it has as much relationship to fine whisky as does Domestos.
However, as I was nosing it and pondering its odd nature it suddenly hit me - this is much, MUCH more like rum than whisky. It has both a nose and palate that you could be forgiven for mistaking for a really funky, greasy old Jamaican rum, and if that was what I'd been told it was I'd score it much higher. However as a whisky this is just a fail.
I have no idea how much this cost but the Grove 2 year old Single Malt Whisky sells for around $170, and if it is anything like this that is highway robbery.
"Poor" : 60/100 (1 star)
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@cascode Ah interesting. That would make sense. Good research!
@Soba45 According to the Australian Excise Act of 1901 (as amended 2006) Australian whisky is defined as "a spirit obtained by the distillation of a fermented liquor of a mash of cereal grain in such a manner that the spirit possesses the taste, aroma and other characteristics generally attributed to whisky". It stipulates elsewhere that the spirit must contain "at least 37% alcohol by volume" and "must not be delivered from the CEO’s control unless it has been matured by storage in wood for at least 2 years". So our laws are much less strict than those of Scotland or the U.S., and a bit more like the Irish legislation. 2 years in wood (same as U.S.) is in recognition that in our climate 3 years can be too much, but the casks can be literally anything and there is no limitation on size. I'm betting that Grove probably does the intense 24 hour maturation thing either at the beginning or end of the aging cycle, and for the rest of the time the whole batch is matured together in a single tun made of old recycled barrels. They are a winery as well and would have plenty of surplus casks on hand to re-cooper.
@PBMichiganWolverine Hey what about my thanks..Haha. @cascode Yeah the nose is something terrible..reminds me of baby sick..I'm not to sure why I rated it 3.5 as after I gave away samples I then gave away the bottle as I couldn't bear to drink it. I will adjust my rating to reflect that. I talked to the owner and distiller who confirmed the 24 hour think. Amazingly the cask is so wet he said if they leave it for more than 4 hours longer it's stuffed! Maybe they hold on to it for a few years in cheap refill or something or actually do they have to age it in a cask? could they not hold it in a steel vat?
I have no words except “Thank you for taking one for the greater good “