Sheep dung

The 2017 Waffle Awards

Posted by: Nick and Ted

2017 Waffle Awards

Welcome one and all to the most anticipated award ceremony ever to take place on social media! Nope, it’s not 2017’s Most Carelessly Dressed Celebrities (that’s the second most anticipated) but instead the 2017 Waffle Awards – the prizes given by Australia’s most tongue-in-cheek whisky blog, Whisky Waffle, to the drams that excited them most in the last 12 months.

The rules are simple, all winners must be whiskies consumed by the lads for the first time in 2017 – and they must be able to vaguely remember the experience the following day.

So strap yourselves in for a wild, controversial and extremely subjective ride through our picks of 2017!

1 The Isle of the Drammed Award Whisky Waffle

The Isle of the Drammed Award for the best Tasmanian whisky

As proud Tassie boys, our first award is for the best dram made in our state in 2017. This year, the Isle of the Drammed goes to:

Heartwood @#$%^&*

2017 Waffle Award Heartwood @#$%^&

‘Oh @#$%^&* that is good whisky,’ – You after trying this whisky.

Hailing from Tasmanian independent bottler Heartwood, the curiously named @#$%^&* bears the usual madcap cask-strength touch of its creator Tim Duckett, starting in 2nd fill port casks, then finished in 1st fill sherry casks before being bottled at a juicy 62.5% (which, believe it or not, is on the lighter end for a Heartwood).

Tim claims the name comes from the fact that it caused him a great deal of grief during its creation. The @#$%^&* has proved to be something of a sleeper agent for us actually; we’ve tried it alongside other Heartwoods that seem to have the ol’ razzle-dazzle in spades, but somehow the @#$%^&* keeps calmly stepping out as the favourite. Maybe it’s the special edition dinosaur-themed label artwork drawn by Jon Kudelka.

2 The Tartan Slipper Award Whisky Waffle

The Tartan Slipper Award for the best Scottish whisky

The Scottish stuff is what got us hooked on whisky in the first place and we are continually discovering new exciting drams from the motherland. This year, the Tartan Slipper goes to:

Glendronach 21 Year Old

2017 Waffle Award Glendron 21

Glendronach do sherried whiskies as well as anyone in the world and after trying the 18 Year Old I thought it could not get any better. I was wrong. Hidden away at a corner table at Whisky Live Hobart was this absolute gem of a whisky. It redefined my relationship with sherried whisky. I went back for seconds.

3 The Pocket Pleaser Award Whisky Waffle

The Pocket Pleaser Award the perfect pick for the parched penny pincher

Buying whisky is an expensive business – so value for money always makes us very happy. This award is for the whisky we considered to be the best value in 2017. This year the Pocket Pleaser goes to:

Glen Moray 16 Year Old

2017 Waffle Award Glen Moray

Glen Moray produces great bottles at more-than-acceptable price ranges, but this is possibly the best value of the lot. The 16 Year Old is far smoother and nuanced than the 12 and for seventy dollars (Australian) it is a must have for all whisky fans with bills to pay. Plus it comes in a shortbread tin! Nuff said.

4 The Weirdsky Award Whisky Waffle

The Weirdsky Award for the most WTF whisky

This award is dedicated to the strange and the bizarre. Whisky that we may not consider… good… per say, but a dram that has certainly intrigued us. This year, the Weirdsky Award goes to:

Flóki Sheep Dung Smoked Reserve

2017 Waffle Award Floki Sheet Sht

Ok, we realise this technically isn’t whisky as it’s still under 3 years old, but it is so bat(sheep?)-shit crazy that it deserves a mention here. Iceland is a place – you may have heard of it. It has lots of spectacular scenery. It also has lots of sheep. And a whisky distillery. For some reason the distillery, Eimverk, thought it would be a good and reasonable thing to smoke some of their barley using poo from the aforementioned sheep rather than peat, which there is also lots of on Iceland. Smoking things with poo is traditional over there apparently.

I am of the opinion that the Flóki Sheep Dung Smoked Reserve is the drinkable version of a traditional Icelandic delicacy: fermented shark, or Kæstur hákarl, a dish that is surely only used to make unwary tourists cry. The locals are obviously made from tougher stuff than the rest of us. Stick with the standard Flóki release (which is rather good) until, like the best Kæstur hákarl, the Sheep Dung Smoked Reserve has aged for a few more years.

5 The Bill Lark Award Whisky Waffle

The Bill Lark Award for service to Tasmanian whisky

The Tasmanian whisky industry works because it is driven by so many wonderful people. We like to recognise one of these people each year with an award named after the founding father himself. This year, the Bill Lark Award goes to:

Patrick Maguire

2017 Waffle Award Pat Mag

Patrick Maguire is a founding member of the Tasmanian distilling scene. A contemporary and a colleague of the man whom this award is named after, he took the bold step in taking over Tasmania Distillery and cleaning up the slightly tainted name of Sullivans Cove Whisky. Not only did he get it back on track, but he took Tasmanian whisky to a whole new level when his release from French Oak barrel HH525 won best whisky at the 2014 World Whiskies Awards. Tasmanian whisky was changed forever and has gone from strength to strength ever since thanks in no small part to the perseverance of one Patrick Maguire.

6 The Golden Dram Whisky Waffle

The Golden Dram for the best dram whisky in the world

Here it is. The big one. The best whisky of 2017. Previous winners have included Highland Park and Octomore but this year… drum roll please… the winner of the Golden Dram, the BEST whisky in the world is…

Belgrove North East Peat Smoked Single Malt

Thinking back across the year to select a worthy drop for The Golden Dram, the Belgrove North East Peat Smoked Single Malt stands out in memory as the one that made me the most effusively loquacious in my attempts to promulgate its meritoriousness. Translation: I was damn excited and wanted everyone to know it. Belgrove is more usually known for its excellent ryes, but the Single Malt is a credit to the versatility of its creator Peter Bignell, a previous winner of the Bill Lark Award. What makes this particular whisky so excellent is the peating; hitherto Tasmanian peat has been sourced from sphagnum bogs in the highlands, which are almost exclusively controlled by Lark.

The peat in this whisky comes from a new source in the North East of the state, dug from a farm owned by Peter’s brother. The first time I took a sip I was sure that I had been accidentally teleported to the West Coast of Scotland! Compared to the softer peat of the Tasmanian highlands, the North East stuff is richer, earthier and more elemental, drawing links with the Scottish coastal and island drams. Sit that over a superbly crafted spirit and I am happy to lay my cards down on the table and declare that I think Peter has a world-beater on his hands. Bloody good stuff.

An honourable mention goes to anything made by Glenfarclas. What a great distillery and still family owned too! In particular the excellent ever reliable 15 Year Old, but also the 40 Year Old, tasted by Nick at the Old and Rare bar at Whisky Live Hobart. It was the best possible conclusion to a fantastic session.

The Founders Reserve Award (AKA the dishonourable mention) goes to White Oak Distillery for proving that just because a whisky is made in Japan, doesn’t mean it’s worth taking on a sumo wrestler to sample.

So that brings us to a close of our 2017 awards. It sounds like the makings of a good tasting! Though maybe give the White Oak a miss.

Let us know your own nominations in the comments! As always, thanks for your support. 2017 has been the biggest year so far for Whisky Waffle! Let’s make 2018 even better!

Whisky Waffle Boys

Keep on waffling.

Nick and Ted

#2017WaffleAwards

Wafflers 4

Floki Young Malt Sheep Dung Smoked Reserve

Reviewed by: Ted

Floki Sheep Dung Matured

Iceland loves a good renewable energy source. Sitting out in the wild northern reaches of the Atlantic Ocean, approximately 900km away from the UK and Norway, means that the island is cut off from the major power infrastructure of the continent. Luckily Iceland has a red-hot spade tucked up its sleeve. Thanks to its position directly over the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, the island is rife with volcanism (fun fact: apparently Iceland’s 30-odd volcanic systems have contributed around a third of global lava output over the past 500 years. The more you know eh?). Sure, this of course means there’s a decent risk of a fire mountain going boom and causing all sort of havoc (remember Eyjafjallajökull? And that was pretty small in historic terms as it turns out – check out Lakagígar), but the big upshot for the locals is that there are bag loads of geothermal and hydrothermal energy to tap into, with around 80% of energy production coming from these sources in 2016.

Iceland WW 7

Historically, like many other places in the region, the islanders would have probably burned peat as their energy source; around 10% of the island is actually covered in the stuff. These days people are generally more familiar with peat in the context of whisky making (or sticking it in the garden) rather than using it for heating or cooking, with places such as Islay and a number of other islands off the west coast of Scotland famed for their smoky drams. As it happens, Iceland has a couple of recently opened whisky distilleries, although only one has actually released any product.

Iceland WW 5

Eimverk Distillery, located in Reykjavík (unsurprisingly, seeing as about two thirds of the population lives in the capital region), are the makers of Flóki. While the official release hasn’t debuted at this point in time (the first release at 3yo is due in November 2017), Eimverk have previously tantalised the masses with a limited duty free pre-release for the Reykjavík International Airport. Thanks to my mother happening to be travelling in Iceland at the right time, we were amazingly able to try the Flóki Young Malt early last year and found it full of intriguing promise.

So, when I heard Eimverk had released a smoked version of their Young Malt I was instantly curious. The Icelanders have been smoking stuff like fish for centuries, so they should know a thing or two about the practise. Now, you would think that they would use local peat to smoke their locally grown barley, but not so. Well, I mean it’s not a particularly renewable source of energy now is it (peat bogs can take thousands of years to form, generally accumulating at an average rate of around 1mm per year)? And collecting it would mean digging up chunks of the astounding landscape that Iceland is famed for. So what was Eimverk’s creative solution?

You know what else Iceland has bag loads of, apart from renewable energy sources, interesting geology and indie bands that is? Sheep. First brought over by the Vikings circa the 9^th or 10^th Centuries, there are around 800 000 of them wandering about the island these days, approx. 2.5x the human population. Now sheep are a pretty good renewable resource – you can get wool, milk and meat from them, and they seem to do a rather good job of replenishing themselves with new little sheepies every year. There’s something else sheep make though, in great quantities every day: Shi… ahem, sorry, poo.

Iceland WW

As it happens, when you dry sheep poo you can set it on fire and use it as a fuel source. Humans have actually been practising this sort of pyroscatology (and if that isn’t a word then it damn well should be!) all around the world with all sort of interesting varieties of poo for millennia. If it has one flaw though, burning poo does tend to be rather smoky… which on reflection could be just the thing for smoking some barley! And that, my friends, is exactly what Eimverk have done!

Introducing: the Flóki Young Malt – Sheep Dung Smoked Reserve. Now, while you may find this all a bit weird, Eimverk note that in Iceland there has been a tradition of using sheep poo for smoking for centuries, so I think it’s only fair that we all remain open minded and give it a shot. Being rather geographically distant from the Reykjavík duty free, my initial excitement about this new release was somewhat tempered by the fact that it would probably be a very long time before I was able to try it. Therefore I was rather astounded (as was m’colleague when I whipped it out unannounced in front of him one night… the Flóki I mean!) to discover that I was able to source a bottle through local outfit Sigrún Whisky, who seem to specialise in Scandi drams.

Iceland WW 1

According to Eimverk, the Smoked Reserve is ‘a limited reserve of a selection of single barrel bottling (sic) from our distillery’. Visually the 500ml Smoked Reserve bottle is almost identical to the original Young Malt release: a dark textured label with the cool white runic design and angular font, although the background in this case is of rough homespun wool cloth, the only other real difference being a small red square on the cork seal.

The nose is very grassy and metallic; if Philip K Dick’s androids really do dream of electric sheep, then this would be the smell of the organometallic grass that the sheep are eating. There is also a big, punchy acidic layer, like mainlining a tin of pineapple, under which sits a fug of chocolate and leather.

The taste is sharp and hot, drying the tongue like strong citrus or tart fruit. Straight afterwards you get a sluggish hit of dull, ashy smoke. Think a pub any time before the smoking bans. Or perhaps it’s like walking past a smoking shed where they’re burning sheep poo (I can’t profess to have ever done so)? The finish is shiny and metallic, akin to drinking strong spirits from a cheap tin mug.

Iceland WW 6

Look, it isn’t the easiest whisky to drink admittedly, but then it isn’t really whisky is it? It hasn’t aged long enough to legally earn that title and it shows. Perhaps they used bigger barrels for the Smoked Reserve, so it hasn’t hit the same point of maturity at the same age as the original Young Malt was released at? I would definitely like to come back to this in a few years’ time and see what it’s like after the barrels have had time to work their magic.

As for whether the sheep poo was a good idea… well the flavour was definitely different to your normal smokiness in a whisky. But again, the spirit really needs to age further before we can properly judge the true subtleties of its nature. If you’re absolutely hell bent on possessing a unique Icelandic (almost) whisky then there can be no substitute for the Flóki Young Malt – Sheep Dung Smoked Reserve. For everyone else, perhaps give this one a miss for the time being and instead save your pennies for a trip to experience Iceland’s true natural wonders.

★

Say what you will about the whisky – it’s a bloody beautiful place, isn’t it?