State of Origin: Southern Australia Shouts Out!









Whisky: Southern Coast Distillery Batch 5

 

Distiller:

Southern Coast Distillery

 

Bottle:

Southern Coast Distillery Batch 5

Region:
Australian

ABV:

46%

 

Colour:

Pale Straw

 

Review:

My wife and I, along with my brother and sister in law, had gone to a series of Australian whisky tastings at Helvetica.  I was very excited as I'd recently tried quite a few of these whiskies at The Grove when I was down in Margaret River.

Even cooler the head distiller/owner of Limeburners was going to be at this tasting event titled: The State of Origin (It's an Aussie thing.)

Now I'd had Penderyn Aur Cymru and Bakery Hills Classic Malt. 

Sadly I wasn't as impressed with them as I'd hoped I would be. 

Next on the list was a whisky from the Southern Coast Distillery in South Australia.   I'd never tried this distillery before and was rather curious as to what we were about to experience.

Now the head distiller from Limeburners, Cameron is wandering around the room, talking to the tasters, and stops to introduce himself to us.

He informs us that this is the youngest distillery in the entire line up and most likely the youngest whisky we'll be trying tonight.

When he finds out who I am I ask him if he'd mind giving me a quick interview.   He says sure, but he needs to say hello to everyone first.

We start to nose the tasting glasses.

And my wife has a startling discovery.

We pick up notes of cinnamon, oranges, chocolate, oak, toffee and as my wife exclaims, bacon!(!?)

I don't quite get the bacon myself, but I can see where she's getting it.  As do my brother and sister in law.

When we go to taste it's an enjoyable whisky with the oranges immediately evident.   As is the oak.  But there's some hints of coconut and chocolates.

It tastes quite woody, but not in a really bad way.   It feels like a very young whisky, and I'm not sure how long it's been in the casks, but I'm glad that it wasn't in them for longer as I do believe the oak would become overpowering if it'd been in for any longer.

The bacon never makes an appearance on the palate, but I'm still rather surprised that we got anything close to it off the nose.

The finish is largely more oak with coffee and quite a bit of yummy oranges.

It's an enjoyable whisky, but I think this one will be a harder one to find.  I've never seen it at a bottle shop, but I'm willing to be that it'll run roughly $100 to $150 AUS, if not more, if it's price point is similar to most Australian whiskies.

At $100-$130 it's only an OK whisky.  It's not a bad one, but there are better ones for the same price point.  If it's $150 or more then it'll be very overpriced.

However at this stage in the night, it's the clear winner.  The next whisky we're going to be tasting is from Lark which has me excited because they tend to be quite good most of the time!



Nose:        21/25
Taste:       20/25
Finish:       19/25
Balance:    19/25

Overall:     79/100