Adelphi The Winter Queen

In March 2018 Adelphi launched its newest Fusion Whisky (after the previous successful releases of The Glover, Kincardine and E&K). Is is a lovely blend of bourbon matured Longmorn with a couple of liters of sherry matured Glenrothes and two sherry casks that contained Millstone. The latter is of course a Dutch whisky, from Zuidam, making this whisky quite special and a veritable sherry bomb. The youngest in the mix is 9 years old. 866 bottles were released and each one of them will set you back some 140 EUR. The name refers to Scottish King James VI’s eldest daughter, Elizabeth Stuart, who was born in Fife in 1596 and spent most of her life in The Hague. She is featured on the label.

The nose starts rather dry, but slowly becomes sweeter. First some cold coffee and freshly polished leather, then some cocoa with coconut, pipe tobacco and some triplex planks. Loads of nutmeg. It evolves toward fruit tea and waffles with maple syrup. The Millstone is clearly dominant. Quite a nice nose.

It goes the extra mile on the palate: picquant on nutmeg, cinnamon, cloves and black pepper and very dark and sweet on demerara sugar, stewed rhubarb, cherries and caramel. It even sports an umami side as if from roast beef drenched in gravy. Goes from dry to creamy and back again. The wood is fairly loud and offers quite the bitter note towards the end, without becoming disturbing.

The finish is fairly long and sufficiently creamy to prevent me from reaching for a glass of water. It starts quite sweet on a dark marmalade – with a surge of rum raisins! – but ends on the woodspices.

Big dram, this Winter Queen, which will most likely be very popular in Holland because of the Millstone in the mix – which is the most prominent here anyway. Thank you for the sample, Anthony.