What better way to finish what can only be described as a crazy year and celebrate an Australian Christmas with a fantastic Aussie whisky from one of Australia’s leading distilleries – The Iniquity Batch 20 bottled exclusively for The Single Malt Whisky Club!
Our Malt of the Month is from an Adelaide distillery that needs no introduction – The Tin Shed Distillery! Not only are these blokes makers of fine whisky (and now rums!) – they are also bloody nice blokes and we are proud to call them friends.
Fresh from their awards for their Iniquity Batch 10 from the Whiskey and Barrel Nite Consumer Choice Awards in Chicago, USA, we are very proud to bring the Batch 20 only available to our members as our Christmas Whisky for 2020.
Iniquity Batch 20 is made up of three 100L casks – 2 first fill sherry and one first fill port cask from McWilliams. This wood was used to mature these fortified wines – not just transport them!
To support Australian distilleries and celebrate Australian whisky after such a tough year for them we have selected a Malt of the Month and two Members Small Batch Extras that will match perfectly with your holiday feasts! Big fruity Christmas cake, plum pudding, all the yule spices we love are featured in abundance! Perfect with a huge dinner, with chooccies and ginger bread bikkies, and in the case of the Iniquity Batch 20 – absolutely perfectly matched to a Massaman curry! (Believe it or not! It just goes sooo well together!)
OUR TASTING NOTES
Colour: Liquid Bronze
Nose: Quite a complex nose with lots of fruits, mixed peel and chocolate and espresso coffee notes.
Palate: Lighter than the nose would lead you to believe, but still packed with a lovely buttery-ness that coats the abundant fruit notes nicely. Plum pudding notes and more chocolate.
Finish: Lingering mild spice in back of palate with fruit on the side, fades out to a milk arrowroot
FROM THE DISTILLERY
Howdy Single Malt Whisky Club Members,
For the last year or so we have been experimenting with different flavour profiles, closer in style to Scottish drams rather than our historically full throttle Australian cask driven drams.
Batch 020 is a bit of a reversal of form for us and trending back to our historic style, but perhaps not quite at full throttle. Interestingly, since we wrote these notes I am finding the whisky tastes quite different, with wine gums on the nose along with orange marmalade and herbal overtones. The finish now has notes of both the red and white and black and white boiled lollies.
We get bored here at The Shed, drinking the same whisky all the time, but at least we won’t get bored with batch 020 as it seems to be different with every time we approach it. We hope you won’t get bored with it either!
Cheers,
Ian Schmidt – Tin Shed Distilling Co
Nose: the nose is rich and luxurious with sherry notes and dried stone fruit, chocolate brownies or black forest cake and wild berries
Palate: The mouthfeel is boisterous without being loud or offensive and full fat with the luxurious nose carrying through to the palate. Faint notes of both nuts and chocolate are hidden amongst the fruit
Finish: The finish is long but light. As the fruit and chocolate fade a reasonably rich malt character steps up to take their place and remind you that this is in fact a malt whisky
ABOUT THE DISTILLERY
Tin Shed Distillery was established in 2010 by Ian Schmidt and long time drinking buddy Vic Orlow. Ian is a straight talker with little time for fake extravagances – and his distillery certainly reflects this attitude. From the unassuming front door, through to the utilitarian stacks and rows of ageing whisky, to the small stills – this is grassroots craft whisky at it’s finest!
There’s no ‘Visitors Centre’ here (although Ian welcomes visitors by appointment) – the distillery is the visitors centre. What you get is plain and simple – almost spartan. A distillery, bond store, bottling plant and office all under one roof. It’s all about the whisky at Tin Shed Distilling.
What Tin Shed Distilling lacks in size, flashyness or ‘pomp’ it certainly makes up for in the quality of it’s whisky. Ian and Vic’s philosophy is ‘only bottle what we like to drink’ – and the results of this attitude were apparent from day one. The very first batch of Iniquity made Jim Murray’s ‘Liquid Gold’ list in 2015 with a score of 94 – he described it as “a gorgeous experience”. Iniquity Batch 003 received a Gold Medal at the 2018 World Whisky Awards – when it was only two years old!. They have grown used to the accolades since then, with each year bringing more medals and accolades from near and far!
Whilst awards are great, with a distillery as small as Tin Shed, they don’t drive sales. As Ian puts it – “by the time the results are out, we’ve sold all of the whisky we entered”. What’s more important to the boys at Iniquity is feedback from ‘the Den’ (the Iniquity members club) and the drinking public at whisky shows. Love this, then join Iniquity’s ‘the Den’ and stay up to date with all new Iniquity releases and everything that’s happening at Tin Shed Distilling.
