Cardrona Growing Wings
New Zealand Single Malt | 64.9% ABV
Score: 7/10
Very Good Indeed.
TL;DR
This will have you contemplating more than just flavour
Fast forward to the inevitable
October has rolled around once more and I’m hovering over the central heating switch with a bead of sweat and a quavering hand. It’s not only because I’m a tight Scotsman, it’s simply the case that once that boiler is toggled over from water-only to water-and-heating, winter is here and the available pool of funds for whisky is decimated.
Yet October brings good things too; a clean, crisp edge to the heavy and humid air and a warm glow to evening windows while the leaves in the neighbourhood around me turn all shades of whisky. It also brings the annual event that is Ingvar Ronde’s Malt Whisky Yearbook.
When I’m asked to recommend a whisky book to an eager new entrant into the whisky excitosphere, I recommend all sorts; Charles MacLean’s Miscellany of Whisky for whimsy and curios, Billy Abbot’s Philosophy of Whisky for succinctness and Dave Broom’s A Sense of Place for depth and romanticism. For a deeper dive, to interest someone a little further on, I might recommend Nick Morgan’s A Long Stride or David Stirk’s cracking Independent Scotch. I almost never recommend the Yearbook face-to-face. I just place it in hands. I gift it.
To be enjoying whisky and all its trimmings really is a pleasure and to walk along the path of discovery with a pal in your pocket enables, empowers and enhances everything. All of it. This wee book is indeed a pal. This is so much more than a guide book, it’s the fast-access key to everything; the detail, the structure, the scale and the shape. It’s the express lane to understanding the size of the monster you’re just about to tackle. It is facts, stories, history and inspiration. It’s the cheat codes. It is humble, yet mighty in its scope.
Bizarrely, and incidentally, thereafter it becomes the marker of subtlety, the measurer of time. As the years tick by it becomes an encyclopaedia, an archive and a collection of data points recording the - often very rapid - changes in whisky. And it costs £15.95.
It is, by far, the best value in whisky.
If you don’t own this book, ask me for it when I meet you, I’ll give you a copy. If you can’t wait for that, here’s the link to Ingvar’s direct page. If you’ve never owned this wee gem before, you will thank me later. If you have, please leave your thoughts in the comments for others, it helps if it’s not just me and a megaphone. There are no affiliate links here, this is pure sharing.
Anyway, the 2024 copy dropped on the mat last week, but being far busier than anyone with a mind for health should ever find themselves, I’ve only found a moment for a quick scan or two so far. I could do with it dropping in June, then I could take it to my summer hammock.
Anyway, as I flicked through, the pages stopped on the section for New Zealand, now counting eleven malt distilleries. My first ever Malt Whisky Yearbook lists two. The section describing Cardrona in 2024’s publication is a a short paragraph, but past editions have given further details along the way as well as features relating to this unlikely distillery, now in its eighth year.
Why do I say unlikely? Well, you know that whimsical idea that whisky is somehow sentient and finding a way by itself? What about someone who actively seeks a change in career and ends up making perfume, then alcohol, then, almost accidentally, turns their attention to whisky? What about then travelling to Scotland to cheekily learn from the primo makers how to take a version back to the land of the kiwi? Yes, a-la-Taketsuru, that’s exactly what happened.
In 2015, Cardrona produced its first spirit, and it’s been something I’ve followed ever since. I’ve had the luxury of trying a few over the years and, as is so often the case these days, each time I’ve found it either interesting, remarkable or impressive, even pledging to keep my eye out. And I have.
Only to look away again immediately. And you know what’s coming.
Every time there has been a bottle made available to me it has been far too expensive. Only people who have their central heating costs already covered are buying this, surely? Every bottle I have ever happened upon has been north of £125. That’s maybe not terrifying to some of you, but that’s for a 35cl. Tiny, pretty and wooden-framed it may be, but that’s the equivalent of £250 a bottle. I’m out. I’m hopping off this little bird. Parachute for Macaulay.
At least that was until they released a Growing Wings vatted expression (I believe it to be a solera) which dramatically dropped the price of entry. I mean, not enough for me to allow the family an extra degree of morning warmth this autumn, but enough to make it negotiable. This retails for around £77. Then happenstance and a recommendation found it on offer at Waitrose for £63. I repacked the parachute and hopped on. And it has made me think. Then think again. Then think a little more.
Now, might I be permitted to firehose you with these thinks?
Review
Cardrona Growing Wings, Sherry & Bourbon Cask edition, 64.9% ABV
£77 RRP (£63 paid) still available.
Score: 7/10
Very Good Indeed.
TL;DR
This will have you contemplating more than just flavour
Nose
Calm and soothing on the nose, hiding that ultra-high ABV very well, with nose prickle and heat down at a minimum. Clever stuff.
Honey, orange oils and sweet lemon, butterscotch, creamy tablet and soft brown sugar, eucalyptus and a herbal note, perhaps rosemary or tarragon.
Palate
Here comes the heat. Not astringent or off-putting, just pure, head-filling warmth. It’s not chilli heat, it’s medicinal heat, like Deep Heat. Eye popping. Gums alight. Pause. On second sip we can start to access flavours, in soft waves. The youthfulness subsides.
Caramels and crème brûlèe, sweet citrus, orangey, madeira sponge cake, golden syrup, oak and a clinging, soothing oiliness. White chocolate and milk-teeth. In time, figs and prune betray a restrained sherry-ness which takes over from what started as an American oak-forward, ex-bourbon display. It fades to a gentle bitterness, a light acidic note with a little soft pepper. In hunting for the green, herbal note from the nose, I think it’s the oak. Not anything off putting.
Everything is rounded, it’s full and harmonised, a wee bit oaken, perhaps. A touch linear maybe too, but to ask for a little more detail here seems petty. That’ll come in time, I have no doubt. It’s expensive, but it’s making a powerful argument. Let’s process this.
The Dregs
Scale.
I think that’s the issue. They currently don’t make much and I believe this is their first effort at a larger vatting/scaled-up outturn. Hence the £77 tag. They’ve managed to half the price of entry from their single-cask 35cl bottles to date, and that’s a start. Perhaps when their output increases somewhat and the infrastructure around them builds up to make the cask-to-shelf process a little more efficient, we’ll see prices attenuate even further. I think they need to.
This is true of other whiskies of the world, in general. They are all enjoying an excited and gleeful novelty right now, with lots of buy-in from their respective domestic pools of interest. At least Cardrona are stretching their wings somewhat, pun accidentally intentional, and actively marketing the liquid further afield. Even with this pricing, they’re out there at festivals and events, this must betray a confidence in the experience.
And why not? While they are headed openly downward on the price scale, the land of scotch marches up, seemingly blissful and oblivious, ignoring the fact that the market is rapidly cooling. As if we need any assurances that Cardrona are on the right path, guess who their biggest export market is?
Scotland. Promiscuity in the homeland. Chilling, right?
I wonder how the next five editions of Ingvar’s Malt Whisky Yearbook will document these rapidly changing tides in the sea of amber? The future holds all the answers and I predict, with each year, this little bird from the upside-down will be a more common sight as it migrates north in increasing numbers, with more impressive plumage each time.
However, as we sit in 2023, it flies a little high for most of us.
Remember that Dramface scoring tends to be applied with thought towards the cost of ownership. That is, a writer or reviewer may choose to amplify or attenuate the scoring based on their interpretation of value. That has certainly had to be applied here. In short, we are reviewing an 8/10 whisky, it is Something Special. Yet, at the current price, even with the Waitrose discount, I can’t in all consciousness rate it there, not yet. Some of us have to keep the heating on.
Score: 7/10
Tried this? Share your thoughts in the comments below. WMc
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