Smögen Wee Swede

I have tasted a lot of whiskies from the Swedish distillery Smögen Whisky, but so far I have only shared my tasting notes on one of them; Smögen Sherry Project 1:4. If you want to know the facts about the distillery and read reviews of other Smögen whiskies, I recommend Whisky Saga.

The latest whisky from Smögen Whisky is called Smögen Wee Swede and will be released at Systembolaget 20 October 2016.

I helped out bottling this whisky! One part of me “helping out” is cuddling with and looking after Dante, the Distillery hound 🙂 An important and wonderful job! But I also actually helped out, too. It is a lot of fun filling the bottles, putting the cork in, putting on the labels and putting the bottles in boxes.

Well, back to the whisky! This is the information you will find on the label:

For the Wee Swede, we took one single Bourbon barrel filled in 2012 and let its contents go through two small 30 Ltr bloodtub casks of new Swedish oak. After three instalments of two months each, we returned the whisky to the original barrel for marrying. The result is this malty, peaty and characterful whisky. Wee Swede; excellent!

The whisky was distilled 23 March 2012 and bottled 4 August 2016 into 352 bottles at 62,5 ABV. This makes the whisky 4 YO. The malt is Optic barley, heavily peated.

Elegant on the nose with soft peat. It does not seem heavily peated at all. A lot of spices, but they are kind of hidden – you have to look (or nose) for them. When I have nosed it for some time, I get cardamom, cinnamon, nutmeg and white pepper. Some oak and a hint of dough might disclose the young age, but it does not appear until the whisky has spent some time in the glass. Mmmm…so warm and rich on the palate! Wow! It is nothing like the nose. The taste is rich on vanilla and spices. I get cinnamon and white pepper. Caramel, fudge and dark chocolate. Some chilli appears when the taste goes to aftertaste. The peat appears mostly on the finish, I think. The peat is well integrated and does not dominate. The finish is warm and rich with mostly fudge, some chocolate and spices. It lasts forever. It turns a bit dry and oaky in the very end. This is definitely the best whisky I have tasted from Smögen.

My score: nose 21 / taste 23 / finish 23 / balance 22 = 89

– Tone