Waiheke Whisky #2

 Morena all, second tasting set from Waiheke whisky. the first set was reviewed here and overall I liked them. This time it was the Dog Years Tasting Set - available here.

Here's the tasting notes:

New spirit
Nose rubber, astringent, paint stripping
Palte rubber, not much flavour,
Finish short, hot
3/10 Didn't like this as much as last time, although the last one was the peated new spirit

Sweet water
Nose pva, blue cheese, lollies, sweet,
Palate sweet, honey, ash, no complexity
Finish short, but of heat at end
5-5.5/10 Nose was good, but it seemed a bit one dimensional after that

Dyad
Nose sweet perfumed vanilla pods, Chardonnay, cut grass
Palate bourbon creamy Chardonnay spritzed, apple
Finish med hot

6.5-7 /10 Liked this more, interesting flavours coming through.

Cantankerous
Nose dark choc, sweet, watermelon , caramel,
Palate bourbon, choc, honey, maple, sweet
finish med long warming

7.5/10 (5.5) Divided the audience a bit, but I liked it. Interesting, if sweet, whisk which grew nicely on the finish.

Overall, similar scores to tasting set 1, there's some interesting things happening in their casks, and it looks like the complexity is growing nicely. Will continue to keep an eye on them.

Slainte

Divergence Whisky (NZ) tasting

 While down in Christchurch I was tasting some curiosity gin from The Spirits Workshop, and noticed they did whisky. So tried some of that too, admittedly with some trepidation as NZ whisky is very hit and miss - more miss for me. In theory we should be making stunning drams, but alas not so much. But signs are positive with some excellent stuff starting to pop up.

I liked it. Enough that I bought the tasting set here (I also got some gin, but none of you care about that, I can tell you it disappeared very quickly which is a good sign). 

I don't seem to have taken a picture of the tasting, so I'll stolen this from their website (soz!)

Virgin French Oak

• Nose: coke cola, vanilla, caramel, Benadryl, aniseed
• Palate: aniseed, caramel, Coca-Cola lollies, orange,   
• Finish: smooth med _ long aniseed

Very easy drinking, nice
7.5

Px Sherry Wood

• Nose: caramel, chocolate, oak, aniseed, peaches/nectarines, marshmallow, vanilla
• Palate: tingly, choc, aniseed, nectarine preserved oranges, ginger
• Finish: med long v warming dram

7/10 nose is great, palate good. This is the one I tried at the Riverside market...

Port Wood

• Nose: black berry, cinnamon nutmeg, apple  
• Palate: cinnamon spicy smokers lollies port soft 
• Finish: med sweet peppers

8 soft and interesting

All in all, I liked them. The Port wood was my favourite, but all good. I still have some left (200ml tasting sets are the best) so will be revisiting.

Whisky: Waiheke Whisky (NZ)

 I didn't make the most recent Regional tasting, so consoled myself with a tasting box from a new(ish) NZ distillery, Waiheke Whisky. They've released a set of four samples (3 whiskies, 1 new make spirit) which you can get here: https://waihekewhisky.com/products/nz-peat-tasting-set

Well, you could, but it's now sold out. So you'll have to live with my reviews.... I will say the info sheet they included was great, included yeast type, wash ABV, Spirit on/off concentrations, all great geek info.

Peated New Make 2022 45% 

• Nose: rubber, flowers, car parts, medicinal, damp dog/wool, peat, menthol
• Palate: rubber, peat, vigorous, pepper, grainy, salty
• Finish: med-long, hot pepper, peat, dry

as a new make, 6/10

Moss - lightly peated NZ single malt, WW Release 01 44% 2017-2022 American oak, ex-bourbon

• Nose: floral, vanilla, rubber, medicinal
• Palate: honey, toffee, spikey, spicy
• Finish: long, smooth

7/10

Seris 1 - lightly peated NZ single malt, WW Release 02; 42% 2016-2022 American oak, PX sherry

• Nose: perfume, marshmallows, great, sherry, sandlewood, parma violets
• Palate: sherry, watery, hint of peat, spicy
• Finish: med, spicy, builds

6/10 didn't live up to the nose unfortunately, but potential is there. 

Bog Monster 46% heavily peated 2015-2022, Virgin American oak, ex-bourbon. WW release 05

• Nose: sweet, dry, iodine, camphor, parma violets, lemon
• Palate: spicy, peat, salt, dry, earthy, peppery
• Finish: med-long

8/10 I liked this a lot. strong whisky, obviously I'm wanting some cask strength, but eh I'd buy a bottle of this. 

Overall, good whiskies, young, but real potential. There is no reason why NZ can't make world leading whiskies, except for the cost of getting good barrels here. And as a number of the new NZ distillers are turning to wine barrels, the future is looking very good. 

From Heathrow and a reference to Conchord(s)

This comes to you from the terminally boring Terminal4. Decided to leave quite early in the morning to avoid traffic in London. T4 however lacks any charm, style and I remember T1-2-3 having more places to spend money. Oh well. I guess my VISA bill will like me for it.
The Scotch shop owner was impressed with what I was looking for (Brora), sadly he didn't have any.

But for those of you outside NZ, Brett and Jermaine (Flight of the Conchords) have won Wellingtonian of the Year.

That seems fair.

Love, terminal B.

Ngauranga & Effluent

Please note the ampersand between those two. I was sitting on the train and noticed the weird contraption next to the Ngauranga station, labelling on it says it's a place for dumping effluent from stock trucks and mobile homes. I never knew these things existed, and there's one I ride past. Exciting!!
Other interesting facts about Ngauranga. There's a boat carcass up there somewhere, probably around the lights. I read something in the DomPost some time ago about it - it was on the beach front, but that got lifted during the big quake. Some guy in Wgtn had been trying to find it for sometime. I think that kinda thing is cool, I often think I'd have liked to have been a historian, or at least done more local history. I really enjoy Peter Kitchin's columns each week in the Sat paper.

All those thoughts were inspired by the absolutely wonderful album, Up by Peter Gabriel. If push came to shove I think that album would make it on my top10. Ever. And I don't like early Genesis. It constantly disturbs me how many ppl presume I like early Genesis and Yes, and I gave up trying to explain the concept of 'neo-prog' to them. Sticking to 'I like Radiohead' seems to work better.

Love, B.

Mammals in NZ

Hi all, in a change from movie and music reviews...I present the third M, mammals. A really important paper has just been published in the Proceedings of the Nat Academy by Trevor Worthy et al concerning the first mammalian fossils to be found in New Zealand. The NewScientist summary can be found here, and the online version of the paper (if you have access to PNAS) here. Actually that takes you to the abstract which everyone can get to.

So why is this interesting? The general version of the history of NZ biota has been that NZ didn't have many mammals - the exceptions being bats (three species). The absence of mammals led to the development of our unique flora and fauna, in particular the diverse reptilian and avian fauna using niches that mammals would normally occupy. And lets not even start on the weta as a mouse :-)
This has always seemed a bit suspect when you think about all the lands NZ was joined to as part of Gondwanaland, all of which have mammals. The problem stems from a poor fossil record in NZ. Geologically NZ has been a bit like Divine Brown, up and down rather quickly...so old hills and lakeshores where fossils may have been are now buried deep underground, or in the middle of mountains.

This paper details further exploration in the St Bathans, Central Otago region which has previously produced a sphenodontid, a crocodile, lizards, bats and birds dating around 19-16 million years ago (MYA). Phylogenetic analysis of the mammal sample suggested a basal mammal that isn't a monotreme (baby monotremes are called puggles, how cool is that?!). Dating of the fossil post Oligocene drowning (OD) is important. NZ was reduced to a small archipelago around 30-25 MYA (Oligocene) which would have caused extinction of some, and a severe bottleneck to other flora and fauna. Finding this fossil, which is significantly different to other mammals alive at the same time (Worthy et al compared it to Australian fossils) demonstrates that NZ had its own endemic mammalian fauna that survived the OD. Therefore our unique reptile and avian fauna evolved in the presence of mammals.

The fossil, and its absence from Australia, causes more problems for the recent suggestion that NZ was entirely under water during the OD period and that all of our unique biota was post-Oligocene. Worthy et al acknowledge that it is possible the mammal dispersed to NZ post-OD, but absence of any major adaptations for swimming (and no evidence for flight) argue against that. This means that there are at least four major high levels groups of animals that lived only in NZ and haven't been found anywhere else since the Mesozoic era - tuatara, NZ frogs, wrens and now the mammal.

George Gibbs has just published a really interesting book on how the NZ flora and fauna evolved called Ghosts of Gondwana. Apparently UnityBooks are the cheapest place to buy it.

Me.