Smiths Angaston 8 year old

This month we feature the Smiths Angaston 8 year old single malt from South Australia.

The Smith Family of Angaston in South Australia have been distilling since 1931 when they commissioned their brandy still. For the 20 years following World War 2, they would use it to make Smith’s Imperial Vat Whisky, but as tastes changed, and brandy and blended whiskies give way to bourbon, the old pot still has been made redundant. Its parting gift was to make a few batches of single malt whisky.

In the early days of the club, back in 2005 we tasted the Smiths 7 year old.  The 7 year old is all gone now, and now the 12 year old is all gone, so its only the 8 left, and there isn’t much of that left either.  Once it is gone it is gone forever because the still was decommissioned after the last batch in 2000. I think i’ll buy myself a spare this month, just in case.

Put together by the Yalumba wine making team, the Smiths Angaston 8 year old is a great drink.  They have plied their skills well to make an extremely pleasant balanced full bodied whisky.

The nose is pungently oaky.  I got some smoky aromas a bit like bacon.

Initially in the mouth the flavour is all oak.  There is coconut, vanilla and sawdust flavour.  This is quickly replaced by the intense caramel and sweet barley sugar flavour, which is rounded out by a mouth feel of lanolin, estery and a mouth coating oiliness.

Finally all this gives way to a pleasant drying astringency with cleans up the previous oiliness leaving your pallet clean, refreshed and ready for another sip.  And another, and another, and another.

The Smiths Angaston 8 year old is a very, very drinkable whisky, its such a shame the Yalumba boys made so little of it.