Smiths Angaston 2000 12yo French Oak

Description

A mid 2000’s release from a quite remarkable distillery, if you believe the apocryphal tales about it’s history.  S Smith & Sons have always had a pot still at their Yulumba winery at Angaston as it was for grape spirit production used in their famed fortified wines.

And then on a whim and prayer, they fired up their old still back in the late 1990’s in order to produce a single malt whisky.  Some say it was a “one off” event.  But you can still buy their malts today.

But what set S Smiths & Sons apart from the nascent Aussie renaissance in malt whisky production, was that they used a big still and matured their spirits in specialised large format casks.  They were winemakers.  They knew oak. Aussie makers, at the time were enamoured with fast, small oak maturation.

I always thought with Smiths malts that you could taste that they were made by brandy makers.

This malt was matured in a French oak and from memory the spirit is lively but the oak is silky smooth and loaded up with kitchen spices.

From a well known retailer, “The palate offers a medium dry profile of dried fruit and cereals followed by a sweet burst of caramel. Good concentration. Gently warming, spicy mid palate. Somewhat tannic and moderately spicy finish with good length”.