cascode
Nant Port Wood Single Cask Single Malt
Single Malt — Tasmania, Australia
Reviewed
October 11, 2020 (edited November 14, 2023)
Re-tasted 14 November 2023 from a sample gifted by @DrRHCMadden
I tasted this and made notes without looking at my old review, but it turned out my thoughts were almost identical to three years ago. This bottling is perhaps slightly drier on the palate, and I think I noticed more coconut and vanilla, but to all intents and purposes this is the same stuff.
No change of rating.
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Nose: Fortified wine, dark malt, dried fruits, preserved cherries, plum pudding and Christmas cake. There is a similarity to the Nant Sherry Wood expression but this is deeper and has red-berry aromas. Like the sherry expression, it also bears a resemblance to cognac and armagnac, but the similarity is less pronounced. The addition of a little water develops a pleasant musky, floral aroma like some sort of tropical flower. This also shows up in the dry-glass, but it is overpowered there by a strong aroma of brown sugar.
Palate: Soft honeyed-malt arrival with raisins, sultanas and cranberries. A gentle sweet cinnamon and ginger syrup note emerges in the development, together with a little banana bread, butter pastry and coconut. The texture is creamy and soothing. Like the sherry expression, the palate here is not particularly long or complex, but this one is more satisfying.
Finish: Short. Butterscotch, red fruits and oak notes fade away fairly quickly into a sweet honeyed aftertaste.
The third of four Nant samples I'm tasting, and the last of the standard 43% expressions. Like the Sherry Wood whisky it is 4 years old but this time matured in selected single port casks of 100 litre capacity (around quarter-cask size).
The nose is big and comfortable and leads to a rich, creamy palate that is very easy to drink, but a little lacking in complexity and length.
This is the only one of the core-range 43% Nant expressions that I think takes water well. It adds a definite floral aroma that is very charming, sweetens (almost over-sweetens?) the palate and expands it with rich caramel and butterscotch-pudding flavours whilst adding length. I definitely preferred this to the sherry expression, but the bourbon wood expression remains the best of the 43% bottlings.
Tasted from a 30ml sampler.
"Good" : 83/100 (3.5 stars)
150.0
AUD
per
Bottle
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Re-tasted from a new bottle.
@cascode my god. This sounds like a Hollywood movie in the making scenario !
@PBMichiganWolverine As briefly as possible, Nant Distillery was founded without sufficient financial backing by people who, whilst not necessarily intending a scam from the outset, were primarily driven by a desire for personal profit rather than making good whisky. Due to limited funds a scheme was launched in which you could buy a cask, the distillery would keep it and mature it, and after 4 years when it was expected to be ready you could sell it back – for around 9.5% p/a compound interest. This was intended to provide operational capital. The business still failed financially, which appears to have happened because some (if not all) of the management and associates were scamming the company of profits. This built to a climax where employees were not being paid, investors were being fobbed off, and the businesses administration offices were closed. Australian Whisky Holdings looked at buying the distillery out, but when an audit was taken by them preliminary to purchase they discovered that hundreds of the “buy-back” barrels had never even been filled. AWH did eventually step in, after securing further backing. There has apparently also been a lot of activity this year with an overturn of the AWH board and their sell-off of Overeem Distillery back to the original owners. I think AWH is now essentially just the Lark and Nant holding company. If you want to follow any of this up, these links contain the full story. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-09-08/nant-whisky-investors-staff-matthew-hayden-dudded-in-collapse/8882420 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-03-10/nant-whisky-scandal-untold-story-behind-investment-collapse/10784396?nw=0ering retirement and selling up anyway. https://drinksadventures.com.au/2020/05/01/lark-distilling-co-starts-new-era-for-tasmanian-whisky-on-asx/
@cascode I’m intrigued—-what was this Nant story ?
@CKarmios Indeed that it was. I've not highlighted the story as the local industry is still trying to get over the bad press it generated for a very young industry. Fortunately the distillery was bailed out and a new administration and distiller appointed. On a slightly less fortunate note the new owner is an umbrella company that is part of one of the biggest wine conglomerates in the country. They now own controlling shares in four major Tasmanian distilleries that between them produce about 1/3 of the Tasmanian whisky annual output. It's good in that this is providing expansion funding, but kind of sad that four once fiercely independent producers have been taken over, and it was the Nant affair that set the stage for all this.
Reading your reviews got me curious about Nant Whisky. A bit of research revealed quite the story, a financial soap opera no less!
That bourbon one sounded really nice. I'd definitely get some samples of I found myself in the area, but these bottles seem priced a couple notches above fair value.