I usually check out reviews of a bottle and sometimes its siblings when I’m confirming my line-up. I don’t necessarily listen to them, but I read them. Knowing that each palate is different means I try to think more broadly than the voices from a small handful of write-ups. However, I did want to note for this bottle, that the vibe I picked up online here was somewhat negative – though the notes cited sounded delightful, the feelings were that this rye just wasn’t like the rye’s they were used to (if they were even used to rye at all). All I could think was: perfect! And spoiler alert, this went down very well.

Melbourne-based The Gospel do describe what could be seen as a warning to some, in that they aren’t after making an American-style rye, and that the farm & region they source their rye grain from has somewhat unusual flavour characteristics. Again: perfect! With the booming craft whisky scene in Australia at the moment, I really would love to do a dedicated tasting some time, especially when they’re doing things like this.

This variant from The Gospel uses a solera system, more common in sherry, made up of 5 stacked layers of new & refill American oak, plus local red wine barrels. The idea is fill from the top, and each time you bottle some liquid from the bottom, you cascade down, layer by layer. This way, the output is more consistent and the effects of differences between batches are softened.

Notes: 👃🏻 Ginger beer, treacle, bready, alcohol, cream soda 👄 Red fruit, aniseed, rye cracker, popcorn, paint, maple, vanilla, green grain.

You might argue that Taiwan and Korea are too close together to both be featured in one international whisky tasting, but to that I say a few things. One, you try sourcing from all the whisky-producing countries using one website, and two, there’s a New Zealand whisky here too (although that is further from Australia than this is from Taiwan). But, seriously now and most importantly, the climate changes a lot between these distilleries, both in terms of meteorology and market – two important factors that affect production.

Ki One (formerly Three Societies) is Korea’s first single malt distillery, founded in 2018, nestled in the shadow of an imposing mountain (pictured in glorious foil, just out of shot, around the bottle here). And that’s not just metaphor, between November and March the distillery gets no sun. That results in a summer to winter temperature swing of 30°C to -20°C. Where the Taiwanese heat opened up more surface area, we now have that coupled with a push and pull effect, mixing the whisky and wood as the temperature oscillates. The folks at Ki One estimate that 18 months in their warehouses is equivalent to 8 years in Scotland!

The core range of expressions features 3 entries, each reflecting 1 of the societies from their original name. Tiger represents Korea with a sherry maturation, Eagle represents USA with a bourbon maturation, and Unicorn represents Scotland with a peated malt. Unicorn won the IWSC Worldwide Whisky trophy this year. It is a non-age statement release, but the distillery adheres to the unwritten international rule of 3 years does a whisky make. I couldn’t find the source of the peat online, but despite their aim to not overpower the drinker with coarse smoke, I do think, from the notes, that it could be Islay peat.

Notes: 👃🏻 Sulphur, burnt rosemary, parsnips, some aniseed, smokey honey 👄 Dirty citrus smoke, caramel, salty, mackerel, bitter oak.

The funnest fun fact I had to share on the night was that the 500 hectares of farmland in which Thy distillery sits is about the same size as Ely itself! Owned by the same family since 1773, it grows many different organic grains. The distillery was the brainchild of a member of the 7th generation, who began experimenting in 2010. By 2019 the 8th generation had taken over and it was 100% single estate; the following year one of their bottles (a precursor to this release) earned European Whisky of the Year in Jim Murray’s whisky bible.

Thy are one of the 10 founding members of the Danish Whisky Manifesto, which seeks to lay down the key values and core principles that the members agree to adhere to for the betterment and ongoing legacy of Danish whisky. They were also vocal critics when the forgotten EU agreement with Canada was dusted off, which was found to prohibit European distilleries from selling whiskies labelled as Rye Whisky.

Last year Thy released whisky #24 in their decade long inaugural series of bottlings and announced they’d move to core, single cask and limited edition bottlings. Bøg is one such core release, and it’s name means beech in Danish. It is a name which makes sense when you learn that the barley was malted with beechwood smoke – finally we have our international whisky in the line-up with a non-peat smoke source.

Another NAS (as all the bottles were in this line-up), this time matured in a mix of Oloroso and PX sherry casks. The smoke is definitely present, but is wonderfully different and leads to a whisky that expresses itself quite unlike a lot of what you’ll be drinking if you don’t take the opportunity to look beyond our little island. Though I would like to point out that it reminded me of the Spirit of Birmingham’s inaugural release, Aon; while that doesn’t have any smoke about it, there was something about those chocolatey mixed grain notes I picked up here that put me back in touch with it.

Notes: 👃🏻 Woody/bbq, vaseline, milk chocolate 👄 Cherry, furniture polish, chocolate praline, mixed grain, apricot jam.