Waterford Organic Gaia 1.1 - 50% abv - harvest 2015/bottled 2020

Age: 3 years, 9 months

Disclaimer before we start: This is going to be a roller coaster of a whiskey review…

I’ve been following (and a fan of) this distillery since it opened and have tried some of their spirits at the distillery, lucky me right? Their new make has a very farm like quality and is fairly delicious even without maturation. This is the first time I’ve had one of their bottles as a finished product in front of me. A very strange moment because I can attach a face and personality belonging to the main characters involved in the distillery including those who directly brewed and distilled the spirit. Very satisfying to see their hard work come together.

The bottle: I love how it looks and feels. I’m sure it’s supposed to divide and provoke. The distillery’s attitude to whiskey is that of a wine maker: Fantastic raw ingredients, terroir driven, overlaid with a healthy dose of transparency. The bottle and its contents should be enjoyed like you would a wine, it should be shared and probably be served as part of a meal. Maybe before, maybe after or even during. Let’s be honest here, based on looks alone it sits well as part of a good table setting. The bottle’s blue glass adds a lot of drama and a wow factor as far as I’m concerned.

I mentioned a roller coaster and here comes the first dip: we tried to open the bottle, it has a glass stopper borrowed from the wine industry. Too smooth, too small, very very tight fit, impossible to get open. Do I twist, do I pull? This isn’t just me be being an idiot by the way, I had five other monkeys try to open this bottle too. I say monkeys because that’s what we all felt like. Eventually you get it open and whiskey flies out all over the place. See the video at the top. You shake your head and think why?

I have an idea though and I’m not sure if it’s by design or accident but in the end I really like it! Let me paint you a picture:

You’re sitting at a table eating with friends or family, the mood is good, so is the food the wine is flowing. It’s relaxed, it’s fun. Then comes the whiskey. Traditionally this often makes the mood more serious. “Oh this is rare? Let’s put it on a pedestal, we’re fancy people” Bullshit, whiskey is for drinking and sharing!

Serious mood? With the Waterford bottle and its sticky top this isn’t possible cause whiskey comes flying out any sense of reverence or church like silence disappears.

I LOVE IT!

Within seconds you know this is for consuming, for enjoying - don’t hold back on your guests! Fill their glasses! Raise the roof! If the mood is right this uncorking is really fun! We all got a good bit of mileage from the sticky cork and liquid flying out of a whiskey bottle. At the end of the day I’m willing to loose a glass or two to the floor/table top/friend’s shirt etc as part of a good evening!

Would ya come on Gearóid and tell us what’s the whiskey like???

Well after you’ve splashed your friends and get to pouring a glass you find out that the bottle drips when you poor it too! Ha, I knew it would! This all means that even before you’ve nosed your glass you’ve already interacted and smelled the whiskey. It’s in the air on your hands and so on. It smells great. It’s young, like the distillery. Grain heavy, new make heavy but absolutely no aggressive alcohol which considering it’s 50% abv that’s fairly impressive. The barley aromas are amazing! It’s a grain first product more than a whiskey. Fruit. Herbs. Wood. Sweet wine barrels. Soil and farms. The smell of this whiskey on your hands is fascinating because it’s like being in a barley silo with all the additional fruitiness that the yeast, brewing and distillation bring to the table.

In the glass it’s wood forward, which again considering how long it’s been in the barrels shows me the quality of wood and cooperage being used here. The colour is beautiful. It looks like the barley that it came from, golden.

Moving on to the flavour and the next part of the whiskey coaster: At first I was disappointed. After all that drama with the bottle the flavour was just ok. BUT this is my problem. It’s not “just ok”, the whiskey is great. I had been waiting and building this up in my mind for so long that anything they delivered would have disappointed me.

The finish is fantastic whether you have high expectations or not. Long, warm and intense nothing like you’d expect from a young whiskey.

Later that day I tried the whiskey again to get a better idea of the flavour. It’s great. Simple as that, my bad. It’s a fantastic whiskey. The new make is very present and allows you to experience the flavour that the organic barley has to offer when it’s given time to shine. It’s exceptionally smooth and the alcohol is so well bound that I barely noticed how high the abv is. It tastes like grain, pepper, cloves, oak and pears. Very Irish flavours.

The finish is long, dry and warm and reminds me of a spiced, stewed pear I had in Morocco a long time ago. Amazing how flavour and aromas can transport you through time and space. A very Irish countryside nose finishing in a dessert that I ate in the desert 10 years ago. Hope I got the number of sssss’s right there…

So I mentioned terroir. Every bottle should be like a bottle of wine with an individual farmer and vintage right? Except there are multiple farms on the label. So this is a cuvée, a winey way of telling you it’s a blend. Multiple farms? So why the whole terroir thing I asked myself. It looks like the grain was mixed before mashing, distillation, maturation and bottling. So it’s neither a blend or a cuvée and instead a snapshot of organic Irish barley that was harvested in 2015. Nice. Quick side note: Waterford are the first modern distillery to release a certified organic whiskey.

As some of you know if you’ve been to one of my events I champion food and whiskey together. I had the idea that this would match to a traditional Irish beef stew so I tried it out and yep it’s fantastic. I’ve attached my recipe in case you want to try for yourself.

I’ve never had so many mixed reactions to an Irish Whiskey. I feel like it took me on a journey and as with all journeys there are parts you enjoy and parts that are frustrating. At the end of my trip I can sit here and safely say I really enjoyed it. While writing this and collecting my thoughts I poured myself another glass and got to relive my journey and the time I spent with the friends I got to share some of it with. Waterford Organic Gaia 1.1. What a ride, the Irish reading this will hopefully get the double entendre.

Well done Waterford, a great whiskey and thanks to Kirsch Import for sending me the bottle.

Nose: Herbs, barley, grain, almonds, oak, white vermouth, preserved lemons, mint, caramel, salt, earth, spices and maybe honey?

Palate: Oily but smooth. Barley, pepper, cloves, oak and pears.

Finish: Long, exciting, dry, warm and reminds me of spiced & stewed pears.

The photo above was taken in Hamburg at a bar called Standard. They need your support at the moment (as do most bars) so drop by their page and have a look: https://standard.hamburg/

Thanks to Amy, Max and Ole for helping with this post.

Comment

Firstly I would like to say thank you to Bruichladdich and their German distributor for inviting me to their event with head distiller Adam Hannett and German brand ambassador Ewald Stromer. I have been a Bruichladdich fan for years, and as some of you know have done more than a couple of events either directly for them or tastings where I’ve used their whiskies. I am involved in some craft distilling myself, so having anything to do with one of the few, let’s called them ‘handcrafted distilleries’, is always a learning experience.

Bruichladdich distillery is located on the southwestern tip of the remote island of Islay where they distill their unique spirits using traditional Victorian equipment. The distillery has had a long and somewhat turbulent history but sadly closed in 1994 due to being, quote “ surplus to requirements”. The person who said this probably also turned down the first iPhone…The distillery was subsequently purchased by a group of private investors led by Mark Reynier of Murray McDavid on 19 December 2000. Jim McEwan, who had worked at Bowmore Distillery since the age of 15, was hired as master distiller and production director. He produced some fantastic spirits and luckily for us a great apprentice in the form of Adam Hannett.

We met during the afternoon in Hamburg with a few other writers, whisky lovers, friends and colleagues in a Hamburg institution; a restaurant called the Bullerei run by celebrity chef Tim Mälzer. We were invited to have a seasonal meal, test some of Port Charlotte’s finest whiskies and listen to the person responsible for creating them. The guys were travelling around Germany as part of a roadshow - rock and roll, right? We started off with a horses neck made with Bruichladdich, in my opinion a simple yet fantastic opener.

As soon as we were all seated Adam started to tell us all about the island of Islay that he calls home and what day to day life is like there. This is something that can be told, yes, but has to be experienced live just like any of these remote unspoiled areas in Ireland and Scotland. Our first course was squash done three way with the northern German classic of sea buckthorn. Although this wasn’t strictly a pairing menu I made sure to try them together anyway. We had the Port Charlotte 10 with it and it matched quite well.

Nose - Salted caramel chocolate, orange (or maybe orange peel?) and seaweed.
Palate - Oaky, smoke and salty seaside feeling.
Finish - Ginger sweets, toast and drying smokiness.

For our next course we had an 8 year old Islay Barley with beef shoulder, roast onions, carrots and Jerusalem artichoke puree. This one might sound a bit underrated but it was the complete opposite. Almost all smoky whiskies go well with beef, but because the Port Charlotte has that slightly more oily, high alcohol presence, they were a match made in heaven. I’ve rarely had beef shoulder that was that tender before. More please! Adam told us a little bit more about the production and the people that run the distillery. It has a fairly low output volume of 1 million but is the island’s largest employer.
Nose - sea breeze, lemon and green fruits but I couldn’t tell what, maybe gooseberry? There was definitely smoke there too but that’s one of the things I love about Port Charlotte, you can smell and taste past the smoke.
Palate - sweet, oily texture, more from the cask here represented by vanilla, and cedar and black pepper.
Finish - Coconut and peat smoke, almond and flowers. The peat smoke tends to fade away.

Our third course was chocolate mousse with dehydrated pear, and salted whisky caramel. I don’t normally eat dessert (in fact I’ve been known to order my starter for dessert again) but I couldn’t resist. Really good. The whisky we had was also very special: the MRC01. This is an example of what good new make can do in a fantastic barrel. This time it was a red wine barrel from a famous wine producing family in Bordeaux. Have a look at the name of the whisky and I’m sure you’ll figure it out. This time the pairing didn’t work with these two heavy hitters but it also didn’t matter as both were great by themselves.
Nose - fruit and peat smoke and loads of them. Raspberry and cherry mostly but it’s salty too.
Palate - warming lively and sweet. This was complex, very complex. Dry smoke and the oak was more prominent with loads of vanilla.
Finish - medicinal peat smoke. You can really tell the quality of the oak in the finish, it’s dry yet moreish with hints of cloves and peaches.

You might have tried some Port Charlotte products before and noticed their oiliness. The reason why? They have oils (like essential oils) in them. Not added to them obviously, but they show up as part of the distillation process. This can be a good or a bad thing: they have very strong flavours and the balance has to be just right to make sure the whisky isn’t too overpowering. I like oily whiskies and Bruichladdich gets the the balance just right. If you want you can slowly add water to a whisky of a higher percent. Add it at the right angle so the water goes under the whisky. Hold a light under it like in the picture below and you can see the whisky, alcohol and oil float on top. The dilution of whisky is more complex than just adding water. Certain chemicals within whisky, particularly fusel oils and fatty acids, have limited solubility in water. When whisky is diluted with water to 40% alcohol these oils can give the whisky a cloudy appearance. For improved shelf appearance they are generally removed by cold filtering. This process makes the product optically more consistent but unfortunately removes some flavour too. Bruichladdich don’t do this; it’s part of their approach to a handmade honest product. When we’re talking about drinking your whisky neat or with a splash of water my preference is always non-chill filtered.

#werbung #advertising Bruichladdich helped out with the running costs of this website so this technically counts as advertising. As you know though I have been a fan of the distillery for years so these views are completely my own.