Milk & Honey LMDW Peated Cask Finish

Whiskey: Milk & Honey LMDW Peated Cask Finish

Region: Isreal

ABV: 55.0%

Price: £100

Opened in 2014, Milk & Honey is Israel’s first whisky distillery. Similar to Texas based distilleries such as Balcones, M&H have the benefit of a warm climate to speed the maturation process along. This bottling was aged for three years in a first fill bourbon cask, after which it was finished for three months in an ex-Islay whisky cask.

Nose

Initial hit of wood, caramel, dusty, and alcohol. Some smoke lingers, but not too much. Freshly zested orange, like Cointreau liqueur, and some ripe peaches.

Palate

Alcohol bite, followed by barley sugars, orange juice, a little cocoa, not much peat, but a whiff of earthy dirt that may be masking the peat smoke from the cask it was finished in. This coats the mouth well and the finish lasts for a reasonable amount of time.

Nose (with water)

This gains a more aggressive nose, vegetal and meaty compared with the freshness without water. The ethanol smell seems to stick around even with a considerable amount of water.

Palate (with water)

This has become a lot more meaty, but with a new sweetness that lingers. There’s also some fresh pears here. Finish becomes a bit shorter, with more grassy notes.

Conclusion

We first discovered Milk & Honey distillery at the Whisky Show in London 2019, and we were blown away by what a 3 year old whisky aged in Israel could taste like. This cask is an interesting experiment into maturation with already peated casks. Some of these fast maturation whiskies can be very one-note, but this cask manages to avoid this, expressing a number of different flavours. It can be harsh at times, but there’s lots of flavour there and definitely worth trying.

Score: 7/10

• 10 - Perfection. A whisky that we’ll remember forever.
• 9 - Amazing. We’d pay through the nose for a bottle.
• 8 - Great. Pick this up at RRP.
• 7 - Good. Happy to have a dram or two but wouldn’t buy a bottle.
• 6 - Passable. Would accept a dram, but wouldn’t seek it out.
• 5 - Poor. Would drink if it was the only option.
• 4 - Bad. Maybe it can be saved by ginger beer?
• 3 - Awful. It can't be saved by ginger beer.
• 2 - Pour it out
• 1 - We’ve never tried a whisky rated this low and hopefully never will.

Have you tried Milk & Honey LMDW Peated Cask Finish? Let us know what you think in the comments section below.

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