SMWS Dark ‘n’ Stormy Crème Brûlée
Distillery G16 Rare Release | 50% ABV
Score: 5/10
Average.
TL;DR
A pleasant dram if you can get past the soap. It’s a big if.
A Single Grain whisky made from Corn, Rye and Barley? That’s three!
I’m a noob. When it comes to a lot of things, it turns out. One of those things is grain whisky and, seeing the words “single grain” on this bottle of SMWS, off the bat I’m flummoxed: how can something with “Single Grain” written on the label be made from three different grains? I mean…single malt is a whisky made from one grain - barley, right? Surely then all single malts are also single grains? So is this a single malt? Also, SMWS usually have a code on their labels - 149.2 or 12.5 - but where the code usually is, a sentence is placed instead: “Distillery G16 Rare Release”. What, or who, is G16?
All of these questions and more swirled about my cloudy brain as I continued scrolling down the listings of a post-bell auction - the best time to find a bargain. It seemed like there were less bottles up for grabs this time, certainly fewer of the things I typically search for - Glen Garioch, Ardnamurchan, SMWS and a few other secret ones (never you mind). Even typing ‘SMWS’ into the search bar, usually the most comprehensive of auction results, had only three pages this time - what’s going on, are auctions struggling? As I crested the final page, I didn’t really fancy anything else besides the bright red swirl of the SMWS G16 bottling that caught my eye. Maybe I’ll go back and look at it again.
Six years old. “In celebration of the Lowland Spirit 2023”. Part of the SMWS ‘Maverick’ range of young distillery releases, like the “A Walk in the Woods” bottling. 50% ABV though, that’s odd - usually SMWS bottlings are all straight from one cask; why is this one so roundly 50%? Oh, 1,300 bottles. But surely that’s still not making sense, because even a big ol’ butt of 650 litres surely can’t be watered down to double capacity and remain at 50%? Is this a single cask at all? It’s a bit odd really, so I decide that I should look more closely and fill the yearning of my itchy mouse finger; I whack in a lowball and go to bed.
£45 was the winning bid, with auction commissions rounding out at £51 with pickup from their warehouse in Perth - £4 less than RRP, which isn’t the worst outcome. I was heading down for the Glasgow Whisky Festival anyway, and the Crystal Seniors live in Perthshire (my hotel for one night), so I could swing by on the way and collect, saving on shipping.
Yellow cap. I’ve historically gone for purples after that initial bottle of 25 year old Caperdonich “Warms the Cockles of Your Heart”, then the good 9yo Glen Spey “Deep Impact Dram” and finally the weirdly un-Ardnamurchan 6yo Ardnamurchan “A Walk in the Woods”. G16 though? As part of the SMWS Festival of Rare Releases, “…the Society is delighted to offer up an amazing range of six small-batch single malts – as well as a one-off custom distilled small-batch single grain.” The 6 small-batch single malts are “Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Funnels”, “Bake-off”, “The Finesse of a Fragrant Furnace”, “Honeysuckle Petrichor”, “Massive Oak Extraction” and “Viscous Velvet”. I guess this means the one-off custom distilled small-batch single grain is this G16 then.
Through the SMWS website I read that this bottling was distilled in April 2016 and filled into ‘first fill #4 char & toasted heads’. What is that? Toasted heads I get, because I’m always leaning too far over the toaster, but the fourth number of char - what’s the scale for reference? Is it out of 10? Classic SMWS fancy pants are afoot here. Luckily for us there’s a YouTube video explaining.
“This is technically a single grain Scotch whisky that we made together with distillery 156, which the new distillery code for this batch will be G16, because it’s the 16th grain whisky that we’ve bottled from…it’s pot distilled which is unusual for a grain whisky. It is matured in some custom casks that we had made in a cooperage in Kentucky called “Kelvin Cooperage”. So these are brand new oak with a #4 char - so a very heavy char with some toasted heads added to the cask, just to create some more flavours. 6 years old, we use 58% corn, 21% malted barley and 21% unmalted rye to create this product. So, incredibly interesting, one of a kind and we only have a hand-full of casks like this left, never to be repeated again.”
Aside from the enigma machine requirements for code breaking, this does sound really different to what I’m usually gravitating towards, and I’ve never really gotten into the grain side of whisky yet. The brand new oak sounds like it’ll have a bourbon-like profile surely? The US regulations state that bourbon must have as minimum 51% corn, so already we’re firmly in bourbon territory. What about that rye then, something I’ve never really gotten into - I wonder what that’ll bring to the table? Un-malted too - so raw rye grain that doesn’t get steeped in water to start the germination process… I’m sure Tyree can explain further.
Finally the whole “single grain” thing - well, like “single malt”, meaning only barley can be used and produced by one distillery through pot stills, the single grain is the same - at one distillery only can this product be made, but the grain part can be whatever the hell you like - doesn’t just have to be one grain. And unlike most grain whiskies that are distilled on continuous column stills, this is a grain whisky distilled in pot stills. Edyoocayshun is happening here. I need to move on though, because there’s whisky to be explored.
Review
Single Grain Lowland Whisky, 50% ABV
£55 RRP - won for £51 incl. fees at auction.
Distillery #156 is SMWS’s code for The Glasgow Distillery Co, one of two sub-10 year old distilleries in the ‘dear green place’, and a distillery of which I’m yet to try any whisky.
All new distilleries must make decisions to both secure the future of their operations whilst also getting product out there in the limited quantities that they have available early on - some charge loads for the inaugurals and subsequent 3-5 core releases, whilst others put it out in smaller bottles and charge slightly higher than they should. Glasgow Distillery chose the latter but recently decided to re-bottle in 70cl and keep the price the same - big love for that.
Looking on The Glasgow Distillery’s website I see that they do a lot of single malt whisky, but no grain whisky. There’s a blended bottling - Malt Riot - but this uses a blend of single malts. It really does seem like this is a unique offering, not just for SMWS, but for Glasgow Distillery too.
Score: 5/10
Average.
TL;DR
A pleasant dram if you can get past the soap. It’s a big if.
Nose
Oh nice - soft, sugary sweety bag of fudges and toffees. Bright red cherry chew. Woody - cedar I think. Hairspray and wow, lovely note of toasting marshmallows. This has a really engaging nose - bright and fresh sugar, candyfloss and redness. Reminds me of the Abbey Whisky Bimber nose, sort of. Peppery Scotch tape. Concentrated grape juice. A fleeting musty bag of rice then straight back into the bright redness.
Water seems to open up the sugars just slightly. Same with the cedar, now freshly sawn. It’s all spice and nice, sweet cinnamon and hints of nutmeg. Some juicy blueberry notes appearing too and then a lovely toasted butter popcorn waft. Fantastic nose!
Palate
Soap! Ooft - lemon soap detergent. A bit of time and space brings an element of sweetness - honeycomb ensconced in milk choc. Sugary niceness - caramels and fudges and sugars. I can see why they said crème brûlée. Not getting much vanilla mind you.
A few days later the soap isn’t the first note - big toasty vanilla is, but then it starts to sour now. It’s a soapy note still but not as prominent, and quickly moves into the sugary lovely sweetness that was found on the nose. It still has a tartness, an astringency that never fully departs. I wonder if water will help.
Water does take a lot of the soapy sourness away a wee bit, and introduces a butter popcorn thing, but that odd chemical sourness just never goes completely away. Reminds me of those wee wavy glass air fresheners your mum used to buy.
Finish is really good and fizzles in those crystalised sugar notes.
The Dregs
Lovely dessert smells make me swoon. I do enjoy a creme brulee and my go-to dessert is typically sticky toffee pud, but I’m loving the aromas coming out of the glass. The big soapy entrance in the facehole smarts like a pickled dishcloth. Blimey, that’s a real let down. It’s not a floral soap, but more a citrus soap - Cif. It’s immediate, the first thing that waves in front of the tongue, but then remorsefully it’s gone to be replaced by sweetness and light - amber light. I didn’t read any notes from SMWS pre-assessment and there’s none on the bottle, but looking now on their website it’s remarkably accurate.
“A rich aroma of rum-soaked raisins, Turkish delight, cinnamon bagels and glacé cherries welcomed the Panel, bolstered by charred peaches, caramel popcorn and honey-roasted nuts. After the inviting nose, the taste neat came as quite a surprise – a spicy hit of chilli flakes followed by dry/bitter cask char. There was sweetness behind that attack, but it was difficult to get to the vanilla concentrate, fudge and toffee bonbons. Following reduction, we felt that someone had burned an exotic antique tea chest before rum-infused desserts took centre stage on the palate, including warm banana split in a rum sauce, a classic French rum baba ... and how about a dark ’n’ stormy crème brûlée?”
So it’s the cask char that’s bringing the sour dry soapiness? I thought it might’ve been the rye given my issues with it in the past. This is an education as much as it is an effort in resilience - getting past the soap was tough, but giving this whisky its right time and right respect, the soap fades to reveal a really good experience - it’s fairly uniform in presentation, a narrow flavour stage, if you like - but those flavours are pretty delicious. Who doesn’t want fudgy vanilla caramel sugar in their mouths?
A few days later and I apprehensively pour on a whisky Wednesday. I spent a lot of time nosing this pour and after a good 20 minutes of writing down notes and thinking about it, the palate arrives and is surprisingly sans soap, on the entrance anyway - it does appear further down the line. I’m a bit relieved and a bit excited. If this is how the bottle is settling a few days down the line, maybe if I leave it for a few weeks it might lose those soapsters altogether. It’s a tantalising prospect.
Reducing the dram with a few drops of water brings out the sugar and spice - sweet cinnamon mostly. The dull soap is almost gone and it’s becoming a pleasant dram now. It still has the oddness, an almost chemical-like sourness that stands on the fringes in a lime green velour suit, so you can’t easily forget it’s there, but there’s enough other stuff going on, with a non-soapy lengthy finish and fantastic nose, to distract enough to bring it from a 4/10 - flashes of promise - up to a 5/10 - average in a positive way. If that sourness was tamed it would easily be a 6. Damn shame. Maybe in a few months it might come good, but right now it’s just not quite there.
Score: 5/10
Tried this? Share your thoughts in the comments below. DC
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