Lark Distillery The 100 Barrel Bottle

As part of my birthday present my wife took me down to the Lark Distillery and said I could choose a couple of whiskies - and this was one of the. I'll paste the blurb here:

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The 100 Barrel Bottle

A decade in the making, Lark is proud to announce their next special release Single Malt Whisky.

From the recesses of our whisky archives we have carefully collected 100mL samples from some of our most unique barrels and patiently stored them away, awaiting the day we had stashed 100 of the best whiskies.

And in a bold move (yes we had our sceptics!) we married them all together in a 30 year old Seppeltsfield Tawny Port barrel.

The result speaks for its self... 23 numbered bottles at Cask Strength - 62.9 % alc/vol.

“Sensational! So smooth yet complex! One of your best whiskies to date!” -just some of the accolades being heaped upon this little gem...

Beautifully presented in our 500mL collectors bottle, complete with solid brass embossed medallion and hand written label this Whisky

is destined for only the most astute Whisky aficionado’s.

The link for the facebook note is facebook.com/note.php/…

Now I'd heard about this and was interested, but at $200 Australian a bottle, I was a little skeptical, but they offered me a free tasting (and they didn't skimp on it, I got a full dram)! I wasn't writing notes, but I was very impressed, and bought one of the 23 bottles (bottle number 18 for the day of the month that my little girl was born). The bottle itself is wide, flat and very cute!

Anyway, on to the actual tasting!

Without water, the nose has the usual Lark maltiness and honey sweetness, but there is a rich meld of red fruits and raisins in there. There is a waft of smokiness mixed with oak and an earthy nuttiness in the background. Really thick, rich and almost meaty this nose.

With water, it becomes even more powerful and rich, really emphasizing the raisins, the smoke, and a hint of cinnamon. The wood mostly disappears, but the nuttiness and the maltiness are still ever-present in the background.

The mouth-feel neat is warm, rich and smooth. A real rich red-fruit mixed with toffee sweetness. The malt comes through after the initial wave along with a delicious mix of cinnamon and raisins. There is a sweet, spicy smokiness to it that is genuinely intriguing. A bit of water lightens it a little, emphasizing the cinnamon, but de-emphasizing the smoke. More red fruits, less toffee.

The finish is long and warm with that sweet cinnamony smokiness lasting for several minutes as the rich raisins and maltiness slowly fades.

As a friend of mine said when he saw I had this bottle, this is 'properly fancy.' This is the kind of special bottling that anyone would be happy to get ahold of. Proper cask strength, interesting story and genuinely fantastic!