Bought: Telser Distillery, 7th November 2016
Ratings:
94.5/100 – Whisky Bible 2017
77/100 – Whiskybase (from 1 member vote)
The Telser distillery in Liechtenstein was founded in 1880 and has stayed with the Telser family for 4 generations. The distillery produces a variety of spirits with whisky first appearing in 2006. Whiskybase list 15 releases so far. The distillery typically does two releases per year, totally about 1000 bottles. Not surprisingly these can sell out quite quickly.
Telser sell to the Swiss, Austrian and German markets, which are big enough to keep any small distillery busy. To date Telser don’t have a UK distributor but I noticed on their Facebook page in June 2016 that the Golf Inn, St Andrews, Scotland, now stocked a bottle of their single malt. It was seeing this that prompted me to contact the distillery. Marcel Telser was extremely helpful and eventually I had the latest single malt shipped over from a stockist in Austria.
Scoring 94.5/100 in the Whisky Bible classifies this malt as a ‘superstar whisky that gives us all a reason to live’. The author, Jim Murray, says about the taste, “superb delivery with that same firm grape, initially firm, slightly tart and salivating but then softened massively by the texture of the intense malt”. He concludes with “the Burgundian edge to this is clean and almost fascinating: this distillery does Pinot Noir-matured malt probably better than any other in the world. A big treat from a small country.”
The score from Jim Murray is no fluke. The ‘Telsington I’ scored 94/100 when it appeared in the Whisky Bible 2010 and there have since been 6 more Telsington releases, all in locally sourced Pinot Noir casks. Telser also did two rye releases, one of which was finished in Laphroaig casks and scores an excellent 83.5/100 on Whiskybase. It’s still available from a German shop for a very reasonable €62.90. Sadly they don’t ship to the UK. Damn!
Lastly, I absolutely love the unique diamond bottle shape that Telser use. I also couldn’t resist the cute triangular 10cl, which I’ll use for tasting so I can keep the 50cl version unopened in my collection.
Whisky Den 