Distillery Visit – Stauning Whisky
As promised in my article on my holiday drinks, we visited the Stauning Distillery, located right across the Ringkøbing Fjord. So, it was a must-visit.
Silvia provided an entertaining and amusing guided tour. After pouring the Stauning Høst, she took us on a journey through the distillery’s history. It was founded by nine guys from the village of Stauning. They started out with basic equipment in a butcher’s shop. However, after receiving an endorsement from none other than Jim Murray, they committed fully to the business and bought an old farm.
Nowadays, the old farm houses the visitor centre and shop, as well as the offices. The distillery, which has its own floor maltings, is located in new buildings right next to the old facility. They can malt up to 14 tonnes of grain at a time, drying it with hot air or hot air and smoke. For the smoking process, they use a combination of peat and heather.
Once again, I enjoyed its accessibility, which offers a beautiful combination of malt and rye flavours. Apart from that, there is a subtle oak influence, combined with hints of glue and spices. On top of that, I also noticed a dark chocolate and hazelnut taste.
Just before the tour started, we had the R.Y.E. made from predominantly rye and barley. Like all the Stauning whisky, it is distilled twice in small, directly fired copper pot stills. The rye whiskey then ages in new American oak barrels for three to four years.
After the maltings, we took a look at the mash tuns and the pot-stills. Stauning operates an impressive number of 16 wash stills and eight spirit stills, each with a capacity of 2000 l. Direct gas firing promotes Maillard reactions and contributes to the specific distillery character.
The last regular whisky in the tour was the Røg a rye whisky made using peat- and heather-smoked rye and barley. It is aged in American oak barrels and finished in Madeira cask. Especially in the aroma, you can detect a fine floral flavour beneath the peat smoke. I also found ester notes that reminded me a bit of mezcal.
Besides Stauning’s own malting, the high number of pot-stills and the use of local ingredients, I also found it remarkable that they regularly use barrels only once. In some bottlings, such as the Distillery Edition Kaos, this has an tremendous effect on the taste. With this bottling, the taste was dominated by esters from the barrels which was also underlined by its ABV of 60 %.
*The fact that I received a product reviewed in this article for free, did not – in any way – influence the rating of said product. I received the distillery tickets for free from Kirsch Whisky.
