Cooper King Maturing Malt
This article is based on PR samples
The Words
I’m pretty lucky to get hold of this set. It’s been created for the exclusive Founders’ Club of the relatively new Cooper King distillery so massive thanks to the team at CK for sending it over. But let’s back up a little and see who these guys are.
Based in Yorkshire, the Cooper King Distillery is the brainchild of Abbie and Chris. Not content with following the norm, they self built their distillery and filled it with a pot still from Tasmania. Since then, they’ve been hard at work filling an array of casks to be released as an when they are ready.
In the meantime then, we have some 24 month malt to try, a long with some new make spirit. I’ll go into some more detail about each below.
The New Make
Something not many people will know, I am a massive fan of new make. It’s such a treat to try the base liquid of a distillery and get an idea of character of the spirit before it’s had any wood influence. And that’s exactly what we’re getting here. The nose is stunning. Bags of fresh cereal and hay with an underlying sweetness that I don’t often get with new make. It doesn’t kick nearly as hard as its 60%abv would suggest and it’s extremely drinkable as it is.
The Maturing Malt
Next up we have some of that lovely new make that has been sitting around in an ex-red wine cask (110 litres) for 2 years. In that time, it hasn’t lost much abv, coming in now at 58.6%. The nose brings heavy cinnamon and clove with some rich dried fruits. The palate mirrors this and perhaps a little heavier on the clove but introduces some tropical notes to round it out.
Interestingly, if I had just the maturing malt in front of me I think I would steeping it in high praise, and it is a wonderful representation of the delights to come. But if I am honest, the inclusion of an astonishing new make means I kinda prefer that at this exact moment in time.
I’m very much looking forward to seeing what Cooper King gets up to next, especially with a fully aged whisky sure to be on the scene shortly
