Whisky Review: Kavalan Solist, Sherry Cask

May is Whisky Review Month at WhiskySuggest.com. During this month, we’ll share 10 of the most entertaining, informative, unique or spot-on whisk(e)y reviews with the rest of the world. Every three days, a whisky review of one of the 50,000+ Whisky Suggest App users is selected as Featured Whisky Review. This 10th (and last) review contains Freeze‘s tasting notes of Kavalan Solist, Sherry Cask.

The Taiwanese Kavalan Solist Sherry Cask is next on my table. The one I tasted came at cask strength of an overwhelming 57,1%. This one is uncolored and unfiltered, has dark copper appearance and was bottled march 2017.

Nose

I expected power with this one, but still, after careful nosing my nose got totally numb. I had to take a brake to reset my receptors. Diluting was absolutely necessary!!

After that, still only very powerful sweet sherry was detectable at first. It took quite a while before it became really interesting. Sometimes patience really is rewarding. Ripe bananas and almonds, cigar box and smoked sausage and in the end a powerful coffee and cherry-lollypop. Incredible stuff.

Palate

Tasting without diluting is tongue paralyzing. After diluting also here very strong sweet sherry upfront. Never experienced that much sherry power in a dram. It couldn’t hide a nice chocolate raisin note though.

Finish

The very long sweet spicy and powerful finish again showed strong sherry as main component. The coffee came back at this point with a surprising caramel at it’s side.

Score

Wow what a dram this is. What can I say? Take your time and dilute this one is my advise, this queen of sherry will slowly show its glorious beauty.
I often wished a dram to have a slight higher ABV, but surely this one would have been better of with a slight lower alcohol level.

Still top of the game though. Lovers of power and sherry, forget Speyside, Taiwan rules!

94/100