Whisky: Cradle Mountain 24 Year (1996), Cadenhead

Country/Region: Australia/Tasmania

ABV: 52.7%

Cask: Cabernet Sauvignon

Age: 24 Years (Distilled 1996, Bottled March 2021)

Nose: Sweet, malty, and a bit funky. Musty dried fruits and ginger rolled in wet beach sand; the aroma was fruity yet infused with slightly salty mineral notes. A bit of tropical funk developed with fermented guava, mango, and longan. Hints of funky wine and wood sugars left the impression of cendol: a cold Malaysian dessert with pandan-sweetened jelly noodles, coconut milk, sweet beans, and palm sugar.

Palate: Medium-bodied and funky with fruit, earth, and wood. Dehydrated shiitake and wood ear mushrooms flooded the palate with a bright fruit punch and lemon-lime soda. The earthy mushrooms shifted to musty basements, cardboard boxes, and wet chopsticks with a stale bitterness. Grainy at times with rice crackers, toasted herbs, licorice, stale tobacco, and crushed walnut shells.

Finish:  Lingering dryness and tobacco.

Score: 3

Mental Image: Basement Mushroom Kingdom

Notes: This was wild. I barely know what to make of this funky-musty profile, though I have a feeling it was better than my description lets on. The notes were all over the place, which hints at the somewhat incoherent experience as the palate pulled in multiple directions before kicking me down the basement stairs to land amongst forgotten cardboard boxes.

The aroma took me toward funky fruits and Southeast Asian deserts while the palate pulled in a dry, earthy direction. It brought musty garden sheds full of cobwebs, unused clay pots, and mushrooms to mind. I was pleased to see someone else on whisky base thought this reminded them of a dank basement, which certainly seems in line with my experience. I am not sure I got the chicken satay sauce that Cadenhead included in their tasting notes, but perhaps that was the same notes that seemed like walnut shells to me; I could easily see that being peanut shells, at the very least.

Celebrated as Tasmania's oldest distillery, I wonder how representative of Cradle Mountain this cask was. It was undoubtedly fascinating, even if the notes were not precisely what I usually gravitate to. I cannot remember the last dram that had me thinking about my grandparent's garden shed,  which I loved to explore as a kid as I looked for garden implements with which to fight ninja, pirates, aliens, or whoever was invading the backyard that day.

Image Credit: House of Whisky