Kavalan Solist Manzanilla, Cask No. MA110314040A, Bottle No. 040/515, 58.6% abv.

The manzanilla cask is part of the more limited sherry-type solist release, along with PX, amontillado, and moscatel. I consider the finno to also be a part of it, but the inaugural release was a different date. These limited versions come in a wooden box and at 3-5 times the cost. Manzanilla is a type of finno sherry and means "chamomile" in Spanish. I've had all of them in Taipei last year and they were all spectacular. I brought this bottle out to celebrate with students.

Nose: oak, chocolate, caramel, after some air time there is strong notes of chocolate, honey, and vanilla.

Palate: flavorful, oily, buttery, initially mostly oak and chocolate, transforms to chocolate, with time it's mostly wood and light vanilla, mid palate has crispy wafers I typically taste in kit kats and the like, and the back palate is pepper spice. Pretty intense flavors overall and didn't taste like a 59%-er.

Finish: short, gets more spicy with time and I can't tell if its abv or part of the juice, then a cooling effect occurs.

This was an amazingly good whisky! Extremely flavorful, more of a sherry bomb profile with heavy emphasis on the chocolate and an interestingly simple presence of wood. It's very rich and can really mess you up as it gets spicier and heavier with each sip. It was a celebratory bottlekill night as South Korea beat Germany to stop their World Cup hopes last night (June 28, 2018). Crazy.

Grade: A

These reviews are from different casks:
Whiskyanalysis.com, 9.04 ± 0.20 on 7 reviews
Whiskyfun.com, Serge, sgp:651, 89 points
Whisky advocate, Jonny McCormick, 90 points
Thewhiskeyjug, Josh Peters, 90/100

Image courtesy of Eric Yee.

Eric Yee

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