Ledaig 10yo Amontillado
The Old Friends 2010 | 56.1% ABV
Grapes to malt, sherry to whisky
We’ve been seeing a lot more specificity from brands advertising about what kinds of wine and sherry casks are used to mature new whisky, but how often do we think about the flavour connection with the drink that filled the cask before it matured our whisky?
Four years ago I fell in love. Not the love I have for whisky, that happened a whole half decade before. This is love-love. The kind that Billy Crystal professes to Meg Ryan in When Harry Met Sally (spoiler alert for a 30 year old movie). Love, as literally every story or song will tell you, changes you as a person. But what you don’t necessarily expect is how it can vulcanise your passions for the interests you already held dear.
Finally, I had someone to rant to about single malts, to help nose drams and go, “Oh yeah, I guess that does smell like ash and antiseptic” (Laphroaig). Even though my now-wife doesn’t partake in healing herself with the water of life, I’ve found myself going to whisky events or bars much more since meeting her. Our first flight together, and her first birthday present to me was a weekend getaway to the Tasmanian Whisky Week. Even though it’s not a style I’m engaged with as much any more, nearly five years later I still think fondly of our early days together when sipping on a Spring Bay or Hellyer’s Road.
Our journey with whisky doesn’t live in a vacuum, it drives along with our life events, accelerating or even coming to a halt when need be. Having someone with me when going to restaurants, bars, or events spurred me to be more adventurous or glamorous in my whisky choices. It was our first (of now many) trips to Beechworth which got me to think more about the wine which helps a whisky come together. We had dinner at the restaurant Provenance, an icon of Victoria’s regional hospitality boom. Think fresh local produce, French and Japanese-inspired tasting menus, and most importantly to this story, local artisanal wines.
We like to share our drinks when dining so I opted for a recommended wine pairing for our savouries, they poured us a Pennyweight Woody’s Amontillado. Now don’t @ me somms! I know that amontillado can only be called as such if it’s from a specific region in Andalusia, Spain. So in Australia it would have to be known as an Apera, but in process, style, and flavour, this was made to resemble an amontillado sherry as much as it would be possible. This was also the first time l had sherry on any kind, or at least, sherry that wasn’t drowning the deep innards of a Christmas trifle. It’s also worth addressing that amontillado cask maturation isn’t the most common type we see for sherry. Let’s chat sherry shall we?
I’m no expert by any means so I’ve included a more helpful resource at the bottom. But the jist is we have dry and sweet styles of sherry; the palomino derived dry varietals are distinguished by their level of oxidation, impacting flavour and colour. Fino/manzanilla being the lightest and driest in flavour, amontillado being in the middle and the first of the range exposed to oxidation, oloroso being fortified and oxidised furthermore, producing the most intense but least dry in the range. Oh also there is palo cortado which, having had its oxidative protection layer of flor die away, plays like a more delicate, finessed oloroso. Sweet sherries from different varieties of grape, such as moscatel and pedro ximenez, tend to resemble tawny/port wines. The majority of sherry aged whisky we tend to see comes from ex-oloroso, with a far but not entirely distant second being pedro ximinez, the other styles tend to be rarer or part of limited edition releases from distilleries (also often including higher prices). Oh darn I’ve remembered cream sherries, well never mind, I don’t believe I’ve seen any whiskies matured from cream sherry casks (please comment if you have).
Now that our sherry share is done, let’s get back to our Pennyweight Woody’s Amontillado. The nutty aromas and fierce flamenco of sweet, umami, and salty flavour had me in rapture. Do you pair it with a steak or do you pair it with dessert? Questions and tasting notes flowed out of me like the green code on a Matrix movie poster. Pondering an end of evening digestif, I dared to look into their whisky list, armed with slightly more knowledge regarding sherry I was immediately drawn to the Kavalan Solist Amontillado. It was a pricy dram but here I was, in love, dining with my partner, eyes opened to a new miracle of Andalucian nectar.
The connection between wine and whisky was immediate; nuttiness, sweetness, and that almost onion-like umami. What was just a cursory adjective for whiskies was now a vital key in understanding how a whisky could generate multitudes of flavours past bourbon maturation. Understanding the wine allowed me to pick apart the sherried notes from the malt notes and appreciate how they integrated together. Although I try not to make fad casking or finishing too much of a pattern in my whisky tasting, I have enjoyed profiling these styles and learning which ones I prefer, and how the combinations of cask and distillate work well, or perhaps fail to better the sum of their parts.
Review
Ledaig 10 year old Amontillado, 56.1% ABV
€75.55. Limited availability.
As a family man with a mortgage and children, new purchases are few and far between, tending to be from bottlers or distilleries who have earned my trust. Whisky is now my comforting blanket rather than a tourist attraction. So although it was an adventurous purchase from a German website, risking a shiv in the wallet from the customs tax-man, I just had to push the button when I saw Ledaig matured in amontillado.
Ledaig is one of my favourite distillates, as well as possessing a distinct peat flavour which tends to pair well with sweeter cask maturations. Although not a sugar bomb, the sweetness, savoury, and salty flavours I’d had from my experience with amontillado married well with the sweet peat of Ledaig in concept. You can also sell me by marketing your whisky as 1. Natural colour, 2. Cask strength, 3. Peated, and 4. Non-chill filtered. All clearly labelled tick-boxes for our bottle of Ledaig Amontillado by The Old Friends. Honestly more whisky labelling needs to do this, clearly stated natural presentation can only be a good thing as consumers become more educated, savvy, and discerning.
Nose
Distant factory fumes leading to a charcuterie board of salami, manchego and dark muscatel adorning a ground of hot tarmac after an illegal drag race. Beach bonfire with burnt plastic straws and sea spray from the evening tide. Final sherry-style notes with Keralan plum cake and allspice. The cheesy umami and sticky muscatel were very reminiscent of some amontillado I've tried, but it’s in combat with the Ledaig peat and burly Tobermory distillate, not exactly a full sherry bomb with this bottling.
Palate
Heavily salted Spanish charcoal chicken doused in plum marinade, moving into oysters dressed with sriracha and a sweet red wine vinegar mignonette. Long, ashy, salty finish with wisps of bittersweet burnt caramel.
The Dregs
There are some whiskies where on paper you surely should just love it. A recipe of success, a witch’s pot of harmonious magicks. But I think the spirit and cask aren’t completely integrated with this whisky. It has flashes of fantasia but overall fails to harmonise collectively. I still like this whisky and enjoy going back to it, in particular when pairing with food, but it’s not one I necessarily savour over a movie or reading session.
There are definitely other spectacular amontillado cask matured whiskies (e.g. Laphraoaig Cairdeas Amontillado and Bunnhabhain Moine Amontillado) as well as delicious sherried Ledaigs such as Ledaig 18 & Ledaig 22 PX, but this fails to hit the perfect sweet spot within the Calder Dune whisky venn diagram.
If you’re into your wines I think it’s a worthy experiment to explore how a malt and cask influence can tango, at the very least it may give you an understanding of what exactly the cask may impart onto the whisky from when it lived its previous life as a wine. I am not even addressing the flavours from the oak and all the other complex chemical reactions and processes occurring during maturation, I understand they are significant, but there is enough of a connection to justify a journey from vineyard to cask.
Score: 5/10
Tried this? Share your thoughts in the comments below. CD