DenHool Veenhaar 2010

I am reviewing a sample of this new distillery thanks to markjedi1. Here are the information he provides us with in is review of it "Den Hool started distilling in August 2015, but the bottle that was released in April 2016 is a distillate from 2010. It was triple distilled in pot stills by Patrick Zuidam in the distillery that bears his name. It is a vatting of refill bourbon casks and PX sherry casks, which explains the beautiful dark color. " According to Dutch-Whiskies.com, the distillate also saw some new American oak but a far more interesting fact about Denhool is that it is the project of a farm called "Drentsche Schans" that grows its own barley and has started to malt it themselves in 2016. So the present whisky was produced with barley from Denhool and aged by them. There was 1130 bottles produced.

Now to the whisky itself.

Nose:

Really earthy. It is like smelling an handful of dirt from a forest in fall: full of dried leaves with bits of wood and chunks of soil with little roots. I then have cherry and almond oil. There is also a lot of white wax with a bit of pickle juice. It is strange, unusual and imtereting. With time I have sherry wood notes behind the wax and pickle. With water, the sherry spices are more in front but the nose is less complex.

Palate:

It is not going in the direction of the nose but it is not clashing either. The mouthfeel,is one of light oil amd it is sweeter than I was expecting. The first note is one of caramel then I have pear, quince, a hint of orange over banana cream. The caramel is halfway between one from a brandy and one from a bourbon. The oily feeling is building up in a very nice way. There is definitively a candy side to it and a spice that tingle your tongue while a vegetal note get to your nose in retro olfaction. With water the mouthfeel is not as good and as for the flavors, it is less sweet and you have more yellow fruits.

Finish:

Quite long, a general sweetness with undistinctive fruit jelly stay with you for a very pleasing sensation. You don't feel you just drank a whisky, you feel you have just finished a nice dessert in a good restaurant.

Conclusion:

The strong points of this one are the mouthfeel and the finish. It is too sweet but with big flavors. At the moment it is crafed to please a crowd of non-whisky drinkers but the ingredients are there for it to become a very good whisky. I hope I will be able to follow them.