Whisky : Hammerhead 23 Year

Country/Region : Czechoslovakia

ABV : 40.7%

Cask : Czech Oak

Nose : Fruit, paper, and something chemical combine in an odd, but not unpleasant nose.  Stale generic fruit juice, old fruit-roll up, and pickled peppers.  Craft store clay, construction paper, leather, and fruity air freshener.

Palate :  Light body with similar fruit and earth notes to the nose.  Clay and construction paper in the middle of an art supply store.  Apple jam, parsnips, and the faint smoke of a really old stained carpet from a 1980’s office park.  This dram might be surfacing some very specific memories.

Finish : Medium to quick finish, sweet mashed carrots and a hint of ginger.

Score : 3 (w/ Fun Factor : 7)

Mental Image : Chernobyl

Something Better : Octomore 6 Year Sauternes R&BT (similar paper & art supplies)

Something Better : Loch Lomond 22 Year Old Particular (similar carpet, more popcorn)

Something Better : Port Charlotte 12 Year; Alexander Murray (similar clay, more floral)

Notes : Project Hammerhead was a classified Soviet super weapon designed to…. wait no that cannot be right. 

This was a fun whisky— I could almost taste the fire works, concrete, and light-up leather jacket worn by David Hasselhoff as the Berlin Wall came down.  Now of course this whisky had nothing to do with any of that— or it was at best tangentially connected— yet the Cold War and its imagery all blur together in memory.

Add in the cool factor and this might very well even be an A— the story behind the creation of the distillery and the attempt to produce a good Communist single malt whisky is fascinating—and odd.  It does not exactly rank up there with other arenas of ideological (and nationalistic) competition such as the Space Race, Nuclear Testing, Ice Hockey, or Chess.  The fact that this was made using Czech Oak, Czech Barley, and forgotten in a Cold War era dunnage house which changed nationalities three-ish times without ever moving— should be rigidly exciting for those in search of authenticity, integrity, or provenance.  No matter that the barley was lightly peated with Scottish peat, this whisky was very much a product of it’s place and time.  I am just not so sure it is a past I want to visit.  The fantasy of Cold War era spy-craft is way more fun than the reality— the memory of the 1980’s are more enjoyable than the lived experience.

My wife actually was actually fond of this— even tasting it blind— and she really thought it was awesome when I told her the story.  I was less enthused about the flavor profile, but it was definitely an interesting whisky to sip on.