The Lakes Whiskymaker's Reserve No.3...

The Lakes Whiskymaker's Reserve No.3 (54.0%): The Lakes Distillery is founded in 2014 at the northern shores of Bassenthwhite Lake in Cumbria, England by Paul Currie who was one of the co-founders of Isle of Arran Distillery. Despite being very new in the whisky world they already went through their first upgrade recently increasing their capacity almost up to half a million liters of pure alcohol per year. The first whisky bottled by the distillery hit the shelves in 2018 and they were releasing new expressions and investing heavily in different ex-sherry casks made both from American and French oak ever since under the guidance of their chief whiskymaker and master blender Dhavall Gandhi. Whiskymaker's Reserve No.3 is one of the most current expressions released by the distillery and is blended using whiskies matured in ex-PX, ex-Oloroso and ex-Cream Sherry casks with the addition of a small amount of ex-red wine casks. 9,700 bottles in total have been made available.

Color: Red gold, amber with a deep orange hue and with thin but slow moving legs around the glass.

Nose: Rooibos iced tea, dried strawberries and cherry soda. Four fruits jam, water from stainless steel bottles and red peppercorns. A couple drops of water make it a little dusty and moldy: Dried cranberries, damp basement rug and wet towels.

Palate: Quite hot on the palate... Whole cloves, red pepper flakes and blackberries. Adding water works great: Espresso grounds, roasted fennel seeds and buckwheat honey. Allspice, Zante currants and cooked raisins.

Finish: Long with black jelly beans, black pepper and steamed milk. 

Overall: It is very hard to believe that this whisky is blended using distillates maximum 6 years old only... They must be making those sherry casks work overtime there. It is thick, syrupy (maybe too syrupy..) and quite intense. If heavily sherried whiskies are your thing The Lakes is definitely a distillery to add to your watch list because if they are planning to continue doing what they are doing with the cask management currently soon enough we will have a quite serious new player in the game. Not exactly the type of whisky I would like to pour for myself on a daily basis but I admit that I really enjoyed sipping it today. Thanks again to Koray Kaan Özdemir a.k.a. Whisky Monster for the sample.

Price: £65

88/100