Tag: Wine Cask

Nose:  Spicy, dried fruits, mixed herbs, dates, and smoked almonds.

Palate:  Earthy, herby, a little spicy – also a little sweet.  There are some berry and plum notes.  Some faint cereal notes – a mixture of Weet-Bix and All-Bran.  Traces of the peat casks that some of the whisky was slumbering in hang around.

Mouthfeel:  A decently medium weight in the mouth with a soft and silky feel.  A slight alcohol burn.

Finish:  This whisky has a fairly long finish.  Spicy, full of peat, and the earthy notes from the palate continue right through.

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This whisky is a non-age statement un-peated Italian blended whisky that was aged in a combination of ex-Islay peated Scotch whisky casks, and Marsala wine casks.  It was bottled at 43% ABV with no added colouring, and no chill-filtration.

This is an interesting whisky; a blend of malted barley, malted rye, and malted wheat that was aged for three years in Sicilian ex-marsala casks before being finished in ex-Islay peated Scotch casks.  The spice from the rye is quite prominent throughout, as is the peat notes from the peated ex-Islay Scotch casks that it was finished in.  There is also a sweet fruitiness that lasts most of the journey as well, undoubtedly from the three years it spent in the Sicilian wine casks.

Although I first tasted this whisky at Whisky Live, it is hard to truly appreciate a whisky when you’re drinking that many of them so close together.  Never the less, it captured my attention, and after acquiring a bottle of it, I presented it in a couple of European whisky tastings that I held – where it was generally warmly received.  Although it was against some other intriguing competition from Goldly’s (Belgium), Slyrs (Germany), Millstone (Netherlands), Floki (Iceland), Mackmyra (Sweeden), and Santis (Switzerland); there were a few people that rated it as their favourite, and most people thought it was reasonable or better.  After the tastings, I sat down with what was left and gave it some due consideration on its own.

If you haven’t seen a picture of the Puni distillery, prepare to be amazed – the distillery building is more what you’d expect from a modern-art gallery than a whisky distillery.  Absent are the pagodas and chimneys, present is an almost mesh-like cube situated in the idyllic countryside of the northern Italian Alps.  The distillery gets its name from the nearby Puni river.  The surrounding region has been growing rye since the times of the Roman Empire, and it is this rye that Puni has malted and used in this whisky.  The amazing cube distillery building houses not just the distillery, but also warehousing where some of the Puni whisky slumbers, whilst the distillery also uses abandoned WWII-era underground bunkers to age the rest.

Whilst I could not say that this whisky has been one of my favourites, I am by no means going to struggle to finish my bottle of it – it’s both a pleasant whisky, whilst also being full of character.  The world would definitely be a better place if more whiskies had both of these attributes.