Distillery: Bimber Distillery, London.
Tasting Led By: Darius Plazewski
We were delighted to welcome The Bimber Distillery to the first of our additional member tasting events of the year, held online and hosted by Darius Plazewski, the founder of the company.
Due to the limited availability of the whisky there we only 25 tickets for the tasting which sold out within 10 minutes. The line-up for the evening covered 6 expressions which were sourced from the distillery and from a private collection.
Bimber Distillery started in 2015, the name derives from the Polish work for Moonshine, and the first cask was laid done in 2016 and is now circa 5YO.
Their journey begins at the single farm, where 100% of their barley is grown. It is then traditionally floor malted, hand-mashed and fermented slowly over 7 days in wooden washbacks that were hand-made at their cooperage.
The distillery uses a direct fire (Gas) method with 2 x 1,000 Litres stills to produce a double distilled single malt.
There is a huge focus on ensuring that the spirit is matured in the best wood they can source, ranging from ex-solera Sherry Butts, PX Butts, Toasted and charred Virgin Casks, American white oak and of course ex-bourbon casks.
The whiskies are NAS and at this stage given the quality they are achieving there are no plans to pursue an age statement strategy or even to expand the capacity exponentially.
They focus on a mix of vatted releases; circa 1,000-5,000 bottles, as well as single cask releases of around 200-300 bottles.
All the whiskies tasted were fantastic and it was generally felt that they were some of the best whiskies we had tasted for some time. Unfortunately access is very limited with most releases sell out in minutes, so it will take a bit of work and luck to get a hold of bottles in the future.
· New Make Spirit @ 63.5% ABV
· Single Malt Olorosso Cask @ 57.1% ABV
· Single Malt Pedro Ximenez Cask @ 52.8% ABV
· Single Malt Founders Collection Virgin Oak @ 58.% ABV
· Single Malt Single Cask Re-Charred @ 57.9% ABV
· Single Malt 2017 Vintage 3YO @ 57.9% Thompson Bros release.
We wish Bimber all the best in the future, and there may be an opportunity for a future tasting with distillery which we will be sure to pursue.
Thanks again for your support.
WWS.
