Irish Whiskey Week 2 has gone pretty well so far. On Monday I reviewed W.D. O’Connell’s Bill Phil, a peated whiskey that I quite liked. On Tuesday I reviewed a blend from Walsh Whiskey: The Irishman: The Harvest. While I didn’t give that one a very high score in the abstract, I thought it was very good for what it is: an entry-level blend. Here now is another entry-level blend. This one is from West Cork Distillers and unlike the other two, which are both sourced whiskeys, it is actually made by West Cork. Or so I assume anyway: they do have their own distillery and it produces a fairly large volume of spirit. As per their website, they have eight pot stills and two column stills and have the capacity to produce 4 million liters of spirit per year—though it’s less clear how much they actually produce. (They also bill themselves as the largest fully Irish-owned distillery in Ireland but that’s neither here nor there.) The Black Cask is comprised of 66% grain and 34% malt whiskey. It’s called the Black Cask because after three years of maturation in first-fill bourbon casks it spends another year in heavily charred bourbon casks. Quite a bit more grain in the blend than I would prefer and I’m always given pause by heavily charred bourbon casks and the potential for the contents to turn into vanilla bombs. Has that happened here or does the char tame the grain and youth? Let’s see.
West Cork, Black Cask (40%; finished in double charred bourbon casks; from a miniature)
Nose: A pleasant if somewhat anonymous nose with sweet notes of cereal mixed in with some cream; light char in the background. On the second sniff there’s some lime peel but the sweeter notes dominate. No real change worth remarking with time or water.
Palate: The sweet notes are mixed with some bitterness here: from the grain? the youth? the cask? Hard to tell. Decent texture and bite at 40%. With time the bitter notes calm down—and char seems clearly their source. A few drops of water push the char back and pull out more of the sweetness (more malt than cream).
Finish: Medium-long. No real development here but on the plus side the bitterness doesn’t expand either. With time there’s more of the char here as well. As on the palate with water.
Comments: The first five words of the review apply to the whole: a pleasant if somewhat anonymous blend. This is not really for sipping but it’s certainly sippable. Not the vanilla bomb I feared it might be.
Rating: 78 points.