August 2021-Waterford Distillery

Waterford Whiskey Society welcomed the Waterford Distillery and Ned Gahan their head distiller for the august tasting which was all online.

Waterford Distillery is now represented in over 40 different markets worldwide and expanding. The distillery’s focus is on Terroir, Traceability, and Transparency. Their Single Farm Origins (SFO) releases were a steppingstone or a snapshot of all the individual farms that contribute to the cuvees, and so far they have used 97 farms to source their barley.

They use various strains of barley and feel that there is less influence on the taste between them as they are all closely linked through their lineage. The distillery currently uses over 2.5T of malted barely per year with 25% of this bio-organic with an aim to get that percentage to 40%.

The first 3 expressions on the night we some SFO’s, Ballyroe 1.1 from a farm owned by Simon Neville in Wexford, Hook 1.1 a farm owned by Martin Foley in Wexford, and Lakefield 1.1 a farm owned by Seamus Duggan from Laois.

The last two expressions were the Pique-Nique which was their summer micro cuvee release, and the Cuvee which is being released in September and is their main release of the year.

The Pique-Nique is a slightly pink in colour which comes from the French VDN casks and is a vatting of 5 farms. They previously considered releasing this on Valentine’s day as the distillery or brewery before it started on the 14 February 1792.

The Cuvee is a vatting of 25 single farms as well 2 casks of their organic whisky. Its an average of 4.5 YO and comprises of 156 casks with 38% 1st fill, 19% Virgin American oak, 19% virgin French oak, and 4% VDN. There is a qty of 50,000 bottles in this release and is worldwide.

This was a fantastic and varied tasting, and all expressions went down very well on the night. It was great to see the development of the whisky from the distillery as well as tasting the new releases.

The Whiskeys tasted:

• Ballyroe 1.1 Distillery Exclusive @50%
• Hook Head 1.1 @50%
• Lakefield 1.1 @50%
• Pique-Nique Cuvee @50%
• The Cuvee (Sept 21 release) @50%

All the best WWS