Introducing the Smoked Cask Series
In the world of single malt whisky, innovation comes slowly. Despite the explosion of new distilleries and a renewed interest in craft in recent years, the vast majority of the single malt made in the world still comes from the long running traditions of Scotland, Ireland and Japan, where tight rules, convention, and large, slow-moving corporations all work to keep new ideas at the fringes. But not so in Australia.
Here, our production rules are simple and our whisky industry young, making this the perfect place to experiment. In Australia, we have produced single malt whiskies matured in native timber, aged in casks seasoned with ginger beer and even distilled from grains smoked over sheep dung - all ideas unthinkable in Scotland. It is that spirit of innovation that drives Archie Rose to constantly experiment, and to ask the question, “what if…?” unbound by tradition or fear.
The new Archie Rose Smoked Cask Series is a perfect example of that attitude. “In Australia, we’re fortunate to be unbound by tradition,” says Archie Rose Master Distiller Dave Withers, “which gives us the freedom to be bold and find our own new ways of doing things. With that in mind, this series is all about reimagining what a smoked whisky can be; questioning why the flavour of smoke can only come from the treatment of grains.” he says.
Traditionally, for any sort of smoky flavour to appear in a malt whisky, it’s because the grains themselves have been smoked. In Scotland, this is generally done with peat, and while there have been some great local examples of smoking grains in other ways - such as Archie Rose’s Stringybark-smoked single malt whisky - Dave felt like there were still other avenues to explore.
“We wanted to tackle the question of whether we could bring a different dimension to our whisky by smoking the maturation casks, instead of the grains,” Dave says. “It’s also about testing the boundaries of where that smoke comes from. Conventional smoky whiskies are always made with peat or sometimes timber smoke, but here we have shown that a different set of flavours can be created through the use of aromatic botanicals like the ones we’ve used for this series,” he says.
For these Smoked Cask whiskies, the team at Archie Rose chose four of their favourite aromatic botanicals and worked with one of the country’s most respected coopers to slow-smoke the inside of their whisky maturation casks. This process has imparted the subtle aromas of each botanical into the timber. These botanical-infused casks were then filled with Archie Rose’s signature single malt and allowed to mature gently over time. Now finally ready to bottle and share, these pioneering Australian single malt whiskies are a wonderful new chapter in the Archie Rose story.
“This novel process has created its own sort of alchemy,” Dave says. “Despite many trials and iterations, when we tasted the finished whiskies, there was a certain magic that came through, giving these spirits phenomenal complexity and an entirely new dimension of flavours.”
While the first edition of the Smoked Cask Series, Wattleseed, is already sold out, the Juniper Smoked Cask is now available to purchase, with two more exciting additions to the range to be released in the coming months, all sure to make waves in the world of whisky.
