Milk and Honey Elements Sherry Cask

In the lead-up to Passover, I often review a Japanese whisky before I seal up my cabinet. With the rising rate of anti-semitic incidents, both violent and online, I decided this year to do a series of reviews from my open collection of Israeli whiskies before I seal up the cabinet in April.

I have visited very few distilleries and in 2019 I visited my first that focused on single malt whisky. I took copious notes and photographs. You can read about it here:

connosr.com/milk-and-honey-israel-the-next…

The Elements series are expressions that are bottled at 46%. The whiskies are matured in a combination of ex-bourbon barrels and another type of barrel. In this case, the distillery used casks that had been seasoned with Kosher Sherry specifically for the distillery. Now, while this may be a good selling point for a certain target audience, it is generally accepted that all whiski is Kosher (unless owned or consumed by Jews during Passover), and there is no need to use casks that had contained Kosher sherry. This whisky states on the bottle that it is natural colour and not chill-filtered.

This bottle was opened by @TAlexander on Nov. 6, 2021 at an epic tasting and gifted to me at the start of 2022. It was last opened in September of last year, and has remained gassed since that time. It is just under 1/3 full.

This expression is reviewed in my usual manner in a Brilliant Highland whisky glass, allowing it to settle after which I take my nosing and tasting notes, followed by the addition of a few drops of water, waiting, then nosing and tasting.

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Nose: 20.5/25

Quiet nose initially. With time I get a classic sherry nose, not as deep and bass-toned as something like Macallan CS or Aberlour A’Bunadh, but it is definitely sherry, not simply red wine. Some spices and caramel as well. Overall, though pleasant, not very complex, and a tad underpowered

Taste: 21/25

Slightly spirity on arrival. Sweet, sherry, some pepper. slight effervescence on the development. Pleasant, but mostly sherry-flavoured and not too complex. Water tones down and sweetens the arrival, but also thins the mouthfeel.

Finish: 21.5/25

Slightly astringent, peppery, fairly long.

Balance: 21/25

The nose is underpowered. Pleasant, but not very complex.

Score: 84/100

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Comparing this to the red wine cask expression, this one has slightly lower pitched notes on the nose. It is a little less sweet. The flavour is a little stronger and dampens that of the red wine cask, but not better.

Of course curiosity got the better of me and I combined what was left of this pour and the red wine cask cask bottling into one glass. The nose is pretty much the same as before, but the palate explodes with more flavour. Perhaps this is a case where the whole is more than the sum of its parts.

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Of the Milk and Honey expressions I have tried, this one is not as good, in my opinion, as some of the other ones. It also comes at a fairly hefty price tag for a NAS (and likely 3-4 YO) whisky.

For casual sipping I would probably reach for the Classic, or a cask strength expression if I can get my hands on one at an affordable price.