Bought: Online Whisky Auction, 3rd November 2015
Ratings:
86.5/100 – Whisky Bible 2017
82.25/100 – Whiskybase (average from 6 member votes)
As it says on the Reisetbauer distillery website, this is the first 12-year-old whisky from Austria. They go on to say “this single malt whisky is convincing on the palate with wonderful notes of chocolate and coca and a very dense, fruity aroma of malt. Its maturation in Trockenbeerenauslese casks gives it a dry and sweet character with a slightly smoky note.” Trockenbeerenauslese is a German language wine term for a medium to full-body dessert wine.
82.25/100 is a very good score, especially when one voter marks this whisky down with 73/100 and says “this doesn’t taste like a Whisky, it’s a Grappa with some special off-notes. Dominated by the wine casks used”. I’ve never tried Grappa so I can’t judge until I do. Another voter says “a perfect whisky”. The Grappa guy is in the minority, thankfully. If the criticism is purely based on an unfamiliar taste you have to keep in mind how far apart some Islay malts are from Speyside ones. They’re both whisky but the peaty, sometimes medicinal qualities of certain Islay single malts takes time to get used to. The use of wine casks in the whisky industry is becoming more prevalent. As it increases people will get used to it and accept it as another variant in the wonderful spectrum of whisky flavours.
86.5/100 in the Whisky Bible 2017 classifies this German single malt as “very good to excellent whisky definitely worth buying”.