Amrut Spectrum 004 Review

Here's a review I did as part of the /r/worldwhisky March community review. I don't know a lot about Amrut other than they are based in India and known for their malt whiskeys. I don't know everything about their climate but looking at their average temperatures month to month it seems to be a rather hot environment so I assume that has a dramatic effect on their aging process. I previously reviewed their Portonova and quite liked it a lot - enough so that I recently bought a bottle even at the high asking price of around $140.

There have been several batches of Spectrum and from what gather, all of them have had different barrel maturations. Today we have 004, which the Amrut website describes as follows:

To make the Spectrum 004, a two part maturation technique has been employed, the first being maturation of New Make spirit in ex-Bourbon casks followed by transferring the aged spirit into the custom barrels. The custom barrels are made with 4 different kinds of staves , new American Oak with Char level 3, new French Oak with light toasting, ex-Olorosso staves and ex-PX Sherry staves. The aforementioned barrel has equal proportions of all four kinds of staves arranged in a one-after-the-other manner lending their own characteristics and complexities to the malt coming into its own on the nose and the palate.

No Age Statement; 50% ABV; thanks to /u/washeewashee for the sample (image taken from Amrut's website)

Nose: Raisins, cereal grains, and honey - it is definitely a malt and there is definitely some sherry influence. There is also a little bit of an off phenolic note like charcoal. It breaths kind of warm, I might have guessed higher than 50%.

Taste: Honey coated raisin cereal up front, fruit notes like prunes and figs in the middle, dry charred wood and more charcoal phenol notes in the end. There is plenty of wood influence driving all that flavor. It's rich and packs a lot of density for only being 50% ABV.

Thoughts: I had no idea what to expect here but I like it. Unlike some other whiskeys I've had that were aged in extreme climates, there aren't a lot of really off funky notes that I would normally associate with rapid aging. When it comes to malts my preferences always lie with the more heavily sherried and preferably cask strength whiskeys but this has enough wood and sherry influence to keep me interested. My only real complaint is the char notes seemed a little heavy handed - I guess I am not quite used to freshly charred oak being at play in most of the malts I've tried.

Rating: B

Note that price is not considered when assigning a rating.