Last week’s whisky reviews were all of sherry cask whiskies from island distilleries (Tobermory, Bunnahabhain and Highland Park). I’ll keep the sherry cask theme running this week but we’ll move away from island distilleries. In fact, today we’ll move away from Scotland altogether. Bimber is an English distillery, located in London. I have to confess that I hadn’t really heard of them before I went in on this bottle split. What’s the point of being a whisky blogger if I don’t know about new distilleries, you might ask. But as I’ve been saying over and over again for quite some time now, it’s been a long while since I stopped paying attention to whisky marketing and other industry news. Indeed, with the exception of Michael K’s Diving for Pearls, I no longer even read any whisky blogs with any regularity. And so it’s no surprise that I didn’t know about Bimber. For all I know, there’s 15 other London-based distilleries now. Anyway, Bimber are new’ish—their first casks were filled in 2016 and their first release was in 2019. This, the third release of a batch of oloroso-matured spirit, came out in 2020. They’re a small outfit and they make their malt whisky from barley grown on their own farm; I’m not sure how large their capacity is but their website indicates that their approach is that of a craft distillery. Well, let’s see what the whisky is like.

Bimber Oloroso Cask, Batch 3 (51.4%; from a bottle split)

Nose: Red fruit (cherry, apple) off the top along with some rosewood. Gets a little softer as it sits but is otherwise mostly unchanged with air. Much better with a few drops of water which pull out some cream and some apricot jam.

Palate: As indicated by the nose, except sweeter and with a bit of orange peel mixed in. Thankfully, there’s not the big oak wallop the nose had led me to expect. The rosewood is the primary note on subsequent sips. Okay, let’s see what water does for it. It softens up the oak a bit and pulls out a bit of toffee and some more orange peel.

Finish: Medium-long. Nothing new here. Spicier with water.

Comments: Very drinkable for its youth but nothing very remarkable. The rosewood note reminds me of Amruts of similar age, but without the effects of tropical aging fewer secondary notes have emerged in the scant 3-4 years of this whisky’s life. No surprise there; if anything the story here is the drinkability despite the youth. I’ll be curious to follow them as their spirit ages up.

Rating: 84 points.