cascode
Bakery Hill Peated Malt
Single Malt — Victoria, Australia
Reviewed
September 27, 2020 (edited July 8, 2021)
Nose: Pears, apples, mild peat smoke with a heathery floral quality. It's fresh and "windswept" in character with almost a briny note, which is bizarre considering the distillery's location is in outer metropolitan Melbourne 40km from the coast. Adding water contributes a soft musky tone to the fruity and floral aromas.
Palate: Soft and sweet on the arrival with well-balanced cereal flavours. Smoke is not immediately apparent but shows up after a moment as the palate starts to develop, however it is certainly no peat monster. Lightly sweetened orchard fruits on the developed palate with a pleasant hint of leather and tobacco. The texture is creamy and silken with just a soupçon of caramel and vanilla.
Finish: Short. The fundamental pleasant cereal quality fades quite quickly with a little puff of smoke on the aftertaste and a miniscule briny note.
Another relaxed Sunday afternoon, another relaxed Aussie whisky. This is the second peated expression I've had from Bakery Hill (the other being their more pungent "Sovereign Smoke") but this is much more laid-back in style. I gather that this is precisely what the distillery was aiming to achieve.
The nose seemed at once familiar and it didn't take long to equate it with Kilchoman Machir Bay. There is the same fresh, breezy quality but this whisky has more sweetness to the nose. Machir bay is also more complex whereas this has simple cereal profile but is very friendly and approachable.
The palate is focused on crisp, sweet cereal flavours rather than rich maltiness. This is a "breakfast" palate, not one for dessert. I did note the absence of any rubbery, plastic sulphurous notes. The distillate is clean and in my humble opinion Bakery Hill could teach several Scottish distilleries a lesson in how to run a still.
This is a very gentle style of whisky and it certainly does not require any water to make it approachable. One common characteristic I notice in almost every Australian whisky (and also in American single malts) is a lack of harshness and alcohol heat. This expression is 46% abv but the ethanol is hardly noticed. Adding water softens the profile to the point that it becomes dangerously easy to drink, but I preferred it neat.
The criticism I have of this whisky is that it is too simple and demure, but it would be a good whisky to give a novice. It lacks the depth required of a really interesting whisky and the finish, while pleasant, is quite short. If it was just a little broader in all respects I'd happily rate this at 4 stars.
It is certainly pleasant and easily the best of the core-range 46% Bakery Hill expressions. It's interesting that instead of using local Australian barley this is produced with 100% peated Scottish malt (I believe it's imported from Bairds in Inverness, but I don't know the barley variety).
There is also, as with all Australian whisky, the very high price to take into consideration. At AUS$160 for a 500ml bottle of NAS whisky this simply cannot compete against imported peated whiskies, most of the 10 or 12 year old Scottish expressions being literally half the cost.
Tasted from a 50ml distillery-bottled sample.
"Above Average" : 82/100 (3.25 stars)
160.0
AUD
per
Bottle
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@1901 Interesting, I did not know that.
@cascode thanks for that info - interesting. Despite an abundance of peat in Ireland, and a tradition of using it in whiskey production long ago, the Connemara you also tasted apparently uses Scottish peated malt. That doesn’t sit well with me somehow but, like you say, it must be the simplest solution.
Great detail in your notes. I can imagine its great base flavors right along with the disappointment of its need more more depth and maturity.
@1901 Australia does not have a lot of peatlands, and the ones we do have are mostly either in national parks, or are designated habitats for native species, or are unsuitable for smoking barley due to the constituent plant matter, which gives an off-taste. There are a few privately owned bogs in Tasmania that are suitable for peating but it's a very involved process. The commercial maltsters who provide 100% of the malt used by Australian distilleries won't deal with it so unless the distillery has a malting floor or some other way to use it peat is impractical to use. Lark uses peat from their own peatbogs, but I'm not exactly sure of their process - it might be used post-drying to add aroma. Almost all of our distilleries that produce peated spirit buy peated barley from Bairds or Simpsons in the UK, as it is the simplest solution.
Nice review, and helpful comparisons to Machir Bay and to Ben Nevis for the CS. Sounds like this distillery are doing a lot of things right. Does Australia have peatlands that could be used?