Milk & Honey Apex Pomegranate

Well let’s expand our single malt whisky horizons! A Pomegranate wine matured, cask strength, limited edition, kosher single malt, aged in L’Mehdrin casks from the multi-award-winning Israeli distillery, Milk and Honey – The Milk and Honey Apex Pomegranate.

Back in 2020 we proudly premiered a new world whisky producer into Australia with Milk & Honey’s first whisky release, the M&H ‘Classic’ (before anyone had heard of the now extremely popular Milk and Honey Distillery). This month we’re proud to offer another whisky from this shooting star distillery situated in Tel Aviv, Israel! Make way for the LIMITED EDITION, CASK STRENGTH Milk and Honey Apex – Pomegranate Wine Cask.

Milk & Honey just keep winning awards every year since they burst onto the scene in 2019. They have won gold medals for many of their expressions, and their Apex range – including the Pomegranate Wine Cask – have taken their share of these.

• 2021 World Whiskies Awards Category Winner (Israeli Single Malt)
• 2021 World Whiskies Awards Craft Producer of the year
• 2022 World Whiskies Awards Brand Innovator Of the Year
• 2022 Grand Gold Frankfurt International Trophy

The Apex range is M&H’s vehicle to try new, interesting and, in some cases left-field maturation and finishing techniques in small-batch releases. The Head Distiller, Tomer Goren, personally selects the casks used in the Apex range. Other expressions in the range include STR casks (Shaved, Toasted, Re-charred), Orange Wine Casks, Cognac, Rum and Tequila Casks to name but a few. The M&H Apex ‘Dead Sea’ is aged 423m below sea-level at ‘the lowest place on earth’ on the banks of the Dead Sea where temperatures exceed 50 degrees! M&H are certainly not afraid to try new things!

The M&H Pomegranate Wine Cask is a Kosher certified whisky aged in ‘L’Mehindrin’ casks. Matured initially in ex-bourbon, then finished for 6 months in fortified Pomegranate Wine casks before being bottled and certified Kosher by the Tel Aviv Rabbinate.

(NB – with a dash of water to ‘unlock’ the cask strength whisky)

Nose: Sour cherries, espresso coffee and vanilla syrup. A pleasant mustiness sits behind the other elements. Definitely a unique nose here!

Palate: Wow – very complex palate with many flavours playing tag with your tastebuds. Sultanas, pomegranate, cherries, prunes, aniseed, coffee and chocolate all wrapped up in a big warming peppery mouthfeel

Finish: rather long and dry finish with notes of white wine, zesty citrus, toasted oak and salty pretzels.

The M&H Apex is a culmination of years of work and research that exemplifies our spirit of innovation and creativity. Driven by boldness and an aspiration to reach new heights, we composed our apex – an exclusive opportunity of limited editions.

A bottle of M&H Apex is an exploration of places and matters: our Head Distiller, Tomer Goren, specifically selects exceptional casks for each batch, chosen for their distinct location of maturation or to showcase the magic of wood and terroir.

This small batch, single malt whisky was aged in ex-Bourbon casks and finished in fortified style pomegranate wine casks for a period of six months. The unique pomegranate fruit offers this whisky its exceptional flavours.

AROMA: Ripe pomegranate, followed by a swirl of rich vanilla, roasted coffee and butterscotch. Strong earthiness, accompanied by notes of orris root, spearmint and freshly baked sour apple.
PALATE: Juicy, with crushed pomegranate grains, dried figs and a bouquet of spicy-sour herbs.
FINISH: Long and dry, with a hint of toasted oak, followed by sourdough pretzels with a side of red fruits.

The Milk and Honey Distillery is an oasis of traditional craftsmanship among the hustle and bustle of one of the world’s leading night life and high-tech hubs. Tel Aviv is a rare combination of ‘old’ and ‘new’, an urban puzzle of preservation and innovation all at once. This young and dynamic environment serves as the ideal background for the dream of creating top quality single malt whisky – according to worldwide standards.

The first Israeli whisky distillery is located in the first city of Israel. Symbolic? Maybe, but it wasn’t for historic reasons that they chose to set the distillery here: Tel Aviv is the heart of Israel’s culinary and drinking scene. There are amazing indoor and outdoor markets here, world-class bars, and restaurants like no other place in the world. The Milk & Honey Distillery is now firmly entrenched in a city that never stops.

An urban distillery, located in one of Tel Aviv’s ‘up and coming’ neighbourhoods, Milk & Honey is now a part of the city’s fabric, among entrepreneurs and innovators, makers and artisans. They built the distillery to be in their hometown, along with the beachfront, the lively markets and the architecture.

As entrenched in their hometown as they are – the aim and strategy of the distillery points abroad. The Milk & Honey people have been focusing on the global market since the inception of the distillery in 2014.

A small distillery by international standards – Milk & Honey are currently producing 170,000 litres of new make spirit per year. Not all of this is single malt, they also do a range of gins and vodkas. So at present it’s a relatively small distillery with big ambitions. And I say ‘big ambitions’ because they have the capacity to distil up to 700,000 litres/year with their current stills – only extra fermentation vessels would be needed to reach this level of production. So they’ve been careful to allow easy scalability of production into their initial distillery build. Smarts!

Dr. Jim Swan (1941-2017) – the ‘Einstein of Modern Whisky’ was a hired advisor for the distillery. Dr. Swan was a world leader in distilling and consulted to many new, big names in single malt whisky around the world. Kavalan (Taiwan), Penderyn (Wales), Victoria Caledonian (Canada) as well as Clydesdale Distillery and Lindors Abbey in Scotland.