Sometimes it seems to me as if the hashtag #WhiskyWednesday was mainly invented as an excuse for pouring yourself a dram in the middle of the week. But recently there was a more “substantial” reason for having some luscious whiskies on a Wednesday. The Mercedes me Store located right next to the Binnenalster in Hamburg’s city center invited Angela Pulejo, Managing Director of Mackmyra in Germany, over to present four of the Swedish distillery’s whiskies. Although cars and whisky do not always go together too well, in this case drinking whisky in a stylish location in front of a beautiful Mercedes AMG felt perfectly right.

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After a short introduction into the history of Mackmyra Swedish Whisky, we got to try our first whisky of the evening. The new Ten Years is often said to be the distillery’s first ten-year-old, but actually it is not. Last year Mackmyra released Tio, which is the Swedish word for “ten”. Tio, however, was matured in ex-bourbon-casks only, while the new Ten Years also includes a big portion of whisky matured in Oloroso sherry casks. It has sweet notes of toffee, honey and vanilla combined with a very pleasant finish with dark chocolate. Since it is limited to 5,000 bottles only, you have to be quick if you want to call it your own.

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Fun fact: There is one thing that all whiskies by Mackmyra have in common, namely that they all contain a percentage of spirit matured in Swedish oak. This adds spicy flavours such as ginger or pepper. But there is one bottling that contains so much whisky from Swedish oak casks that it was named after this: Svensk Ek. In addition to sweet and oaky notes you will also find citrus fruits as well as a lot of herbs and anise in it, plus those typical pepper and ginger notes. Like most of Mackmyra’s whiskies the Svensk Ek is bottled at 46.1%.  The company does not only do this because they consider this to be a good ABV for a whisky, but also because 461 is part of their registration number in Sweden.

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Sometimes Mackmyra’s master blender Angela D’Orazio finds casks in the warehouse that are even better than the others. From these casks she creates the whiskies of the Moment series, whose Moment Vintage expression we got next. It is bottled at cask strength and limited to 1,542 bottles only. In it you will find notes of vanilla, wine, yellow fruits, fudge and even some leather. The finish is dominated by a herby aroma.

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The last whisky of the evening was Svensk Rök, the only peated whisky from Mackmyra’s standard range. To produce it, the distillery uses small amounts of peat taken from the Swedish moors. Every now and then they also use this peat for various special bottlings. Once again you find fruity and oaky notes in the Svensk Rök combined with herbs and spices. I even made out some tobacco. Over all lies a cushy peatiness. Although this was supposed to be our last dram, Angela was very generous. Before we went back out into the cold Hamburg night, she poured everybody one, two or even three glasses of their favorite whisky of the evening. When it was time to leave, I would have loved to take the Mercedes AMG I was talking about in the beginning. But you should never forget: Don’t drink and drive…

by Aaron

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More info: http://www.mackmyra.com (Distillery) ; https://www.facebook.com/Mercedes.me.Hamburg/ (Location)