White Peaks Distillery – Wire Works – Gather 1 (English Single Malt Whisky: 53.6% ABV)
Visual: Deep, slightly browned gold. Mix of slow puckering and fast streaks come from the spirit.
Nose: Rich red grapes. Smoked beef. Beef hot pot. Light gherkins. Slight salt. Water makes cleaner, still slight gherkins and salt.
Body: Thick with strong alcohol. Red grapes. Cherry pocked biscuits. Malt drinks. Dry toffee. Vanilla custard. Green grapes. Water makes more fudge, fatty butter, cherries and small amount of smoke.
Finish: Strong alcohol. Crusty white bread. Cherry pocked biscuits. Gingerbread touch. Fudge. Sweet red wine. Slightly musty red wine. Green grapes. Water gives an oily sheen. Soot. Fatty butter and sweet red grapes.
Conclusion: Ok, this is peated, when I pay attention to that element it is obvious. While this is not heavily peated you can’t miss it when you look. Yet, over time as I slip into gentle sipping times, sweet and red fruit is all I vibe, it just seems to gently slip into the background.
It is such an odd thing. Aroma deffo has a smoked beef peat style, sooty backing to the finish, decent smoke mid body and yet …
What I get is so obviously red fruit, big sweet red grapes over toffee and fudge notes. Neat the alcohol is so intense, big flavor but the alcohol shows big as well. I like a bit of water play to really enjoy this properly myself.
With water everything is so much clearer, and a slightly oily, fatty butter sheen makes all the sweet favours grip so much more. The grapes get more evidently wine like here, and yet, once again, if I pay attention there is still smoke underlying everything and controlling the sweetness.
It may sound like a criticism when I emphasize how the peat goes out of the way if you don’t pay attention but I mean it as a compliment. The smoke and peat is there, enjoyable and doing its job even when I am not actively paying attention to it. It gives limits to the sweetness and contrasts it. It doesn’t have to be standing out and shouting to do its job well.
I love it. The sweet flavours and Moscatel influence are a big part, but also you get to see the influence of the long fermentation which gives lovely mouthfeel and flavours despite being comparatively young whisky. Which I appreciate as the native flavours of the spirit got lost somewhat under the barrel influence in the Necessary Evil Finish release they had. It was delicious but lost the joy of that native house character a bit,
With water it is easy drinking and very tasty, without water it is intense but still delicious, and in both cases the peat is subtly doing its thing.
Bad sides? Well not bad, but the aroma, especially when neat, has a slight gherkin/pickle note. Probably from the peat interaction with the other notes. I don’t dislike it, but it is odd and would probably be just slightly better without that.
Any which way, love this, big, shows the barrel well, but as mentioned unlike the Necessary Evil release really lets the house character shine and the joy of the long fermentations high quality base spirit
A true gift to the independent stores and another great reason to support your local store.
Background: I was very interested when I saw this at Independent Spirit, and had to grab. White Peak have made the Gather series just for independent high street retailers, which is a really cool thing to do. One of only 295 bottles, this is lightly peated, aged in ex bourbon barrels then finished in Moscatel wine barrels. Which sounded a very nice set up to me. I’ve had a bit of experience with Wire Works whisky, did a tasting of their range at The Hideout, then grabbed their Necessary Evil Imperial Stout finish bottle, which I very much enjoyed but the big finish did hide some of the great native character of the spirit. I was hoping this would show more of a balance between native spirit character and unusual finish style. Music wise I went for Ulver: Neverland. You can never go wrong with Ulver as backing music for drinking, it is so good.
