Sherried Scotch whisky your thing? Then today’s New Arrival of the Week is set to get you salivating… Say hello to Darkness 8 Year Old!
We ADORE sherried whisky here at MoM Towers. One of our top go-tos for all things sherry flavour has been the Darkness!* range, where liquid from well-known distilleries has been finished in specially-coopered sherry octave casks. The result? Something truly mouth-watering.
But the results were also pretty scarce. Each octave cask produces around 46 litres of whisky (it’s called an ‘octave’ because it is one-eighth of the size, in this case, of a sherry butt). The smaller size gives an increased surface area to volume ratio, so the whisky packs a punch. But also… once it’s gone, it’s gone. There are still some drops of these expressions left (you can see them right here), but generally it’s pretty tricky to get your mitts on all things Darkness!.
One solution (which we are THOROUGHLY on board with) was to get clever with the blending process and introduce a core, permanent expression. Which is exactly what the clever folks at Darkness did!
Continuous sherried deliciousness.
Those nifty little octave casks are still very much involved (the influence immediately shines through in the silky, nutty, chocolatey palate), but what’s new is that the single malt (undisclosed distillery, this time) starts off life in ex-bourbon barrels. Much easier to source. And where the smaller-run Darknesses! showcased a whole heap of distillery character (fun if you’re the experimental sort), this new eight year old will offer exactly the same deliciousness bottle after bottle.
Speaking of deliciousness, what do we have here? In the glass on the nose, it’s all dried dark fruit, Christmas cake, chocolate-covered cashews, cinnamon spice and dried orange peel. On the palate, it’s mega oily, with some olive bread notes, raisins, nutmeg, orange furniture polish and gentle oakiness, too. The finish is all about those Christmas chocolates.
It might be July, but Darkness 8 Year Old is serving us all kinds of delectable festive vibes. And we’re here for it. The best thing? So will this expression come actual Christmas! Long live continuous-release Darkness.
*Why the ‘!’ sometimes? The new Darkness branding has dropped the over-excitement. Consider this consistently inconsistent.
