Two weeks ago, I wrote about my first real-life whisky tasting with the Joburg Whisky Club and Candice Baker from Navigate World Whisky. We tasted quite a few delicious drams, including the Linkwood 8 yo whisky. Another delectable release that I tried that evening and promptly went out to buy was the Waterford Cooladine Edition 1.1 Irish single malt whisky.
Terroir has been a controversial word in the whisky industry for many years. In 2015, Mark Reynier started his Waterford Distillery project to experiment and fully understand the concept of terroir in whisky.
The Waterford Distillery is located in a converted former Guinness brewery in the southeast of Ireland. Mark was previously at Bruichladdich, where he started experimenting with the concept, but Waterford allowed him to explore it more extensively.
Terroir is how a particular region’s climate, soils and aspect (terrain) affect the taste of the food. The dominant belief in the whisky industry is that wood makes the whisky. Maturation in oak barrels is often attributed to providing 70% or more of a whisky’s flavour. However, at Waterford, the focus is on the barley.
The distillery works with 72 Irish farms, all located in the same region as the distillery. The barley is grown in 19 different soil types and everything is meticulously documented in a digital logistical system. Each farmer’s crop is harvested, malted, fermented and finally distilled separately. Effectively, this creates 40 different new-make spirits each season.
Also Read: Dunville’s PX Cask 12 yo Whiskey
Cooladine Single Farm Origin Whisky
The single farm origin whisky is then allocated per country. Only Waterford Cooladine and Knockroe barley is used in the limited edition whisky for South Africa. The back of the bottle has a code.
When you enter this into the Waterford website, it tells you every possible thing you could ever want to know about where the whisky and the environment the barley was grown in.
The land farmed by brothers William and Pat Doyle at Cooladine in County Wexford stands close to old Quaker burial grounds west of the River Slaney. These free-draining, fertile fields derived from the famously productive Clonroche soils are shingle to clay-rich marl, mainly from the Ordovician shale bedrock.
Barley variety: Overture barley
Yeast Type: Mauri Distillers yeast
Harvested: 16 August 2015
Maturation period: 4 years, 28 days
Bottled: November 2020
No of bottles: 5,076 bottles
Waterford Cooladine Edition 1.1 Whisky Review
However, it is not only the terroir that is important. Waterford Distillery also focuses on the wood policy, using only American and French oak to age their spirit in.
COUNTRY: Ireland
ABV: 50%
COLOUR: Golden liquid sunset
NOSE: Grain sweetness, green barley, freshly cut pine wood with toffee and red apples. Subtle and elegant. Bits of spice with hints of pepper and cloves.
PALATE: Summer spices with ginger and coriander. Condensed milk and vanilla custard with bits of black pepper and barley. Lovely smooth, and balanced. Hints of sultanas, toffee and lemon. Smooth and balanced. Water smooths out the alcohol heat and makes it a bit lighter drinking. Oily with a full body mouthfeel.
FINISH: Honey sweetness with malt.
RATING: EXCELLENT
The Waterford Cooladine Edition 1.1 single malt is a delicious all year round whisky. Complex enough to be momorable, but still easy to drink. It has the sweetest finish I tasted in a whisky in a long time. The initial palate is quite spicy, then the sweetness moves forward and continues on the finish. Perfect for my sweet palate.
In SA, it retails for around R 1 495, and I bought mine from Navigate World Whisky. I can’t wait for the Cooladine 2.1 Edition to be released to compare them next to each other.
Also Read: Redbreast 12 yo Whiskey
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