THE MILLSTONE SHERRY DUO, OLOROSO VS PX
Two casks of Millstone single malt from Zuidam Distillers, filled seven months apart in 2016, both matured full term in a sherry butt, both bottled by Blackadder at cask strength within half a point of each other. One butt held Oloroso, the dry, nutty, oxidatively aged sherry of Jerez. The other held Pedro Ximenez, the black, syrupy wine pressed from sun-dried grapes. Everything else is the same.
These are the two unpeated Millstone casks in our Blackadder import, so what you taste is the spirit and the sherry and nothing else. Zuidam's slow, windmill-ground, days-long-fermented malt is robust enough to carry six or seven years in serious sherry wood without disappearing into it. Sold as a set, 10% cheaper than the two bottles on their own.
Bottle one: Millstone Oloroso Sherry Cask No. 17B040
- Distilled December 16, 2016, matured 6 years in one ex-Oloroso sherry butt, full term.
- 57.7% cask strength, natural colour, non-chill filtered. 703 bottles.
- Oloroso gives depth, nutty richness and structure without the sugar. Reviewers of this cask have called it a proper ex-solera butt, not a briefly seasoned stand-in.
Bottle two: Millstone PX Sherry Cask No. B0302
- Distilled May 17, 2016, matured 7 years in one ex-Pedro Ximenez sherry butt, full term.
- 57.3% cask strength, natural colour, non-chill filtered. 747 bottles.
- PX is the sweetest, darkest wine in Jerez. Its butts hand the whisky richness, deep colour and concentrated dried fruit. This is about as much cask influence as a maturation program can offer.
Why a set
Oloroso versus PX is the oldest argument in sherry-matured whisky, and it is almost never settled fairly, because the two bottles on the table come from different distilleries, different decades, different bottlers. Here the spirit is the same, the year is the same, the cask size is the same, the bottler is the same. Pour them side by side and the only thing left to argue about is the sherry: dry and savoury in one glass, sweet and dark in the other.
One set contains one 700ml bottle of each release. Both are in stock and ship now.
10% off buying both bottles separately.
| Specification | Oloroso Cask 17B040 | PX Cask B0302 |
|---|---|---|
| Style | Dutch single malt, single cask | Dutch single malt, single cask |
| Distillery | Zuidam Distillers, Baarle-Nassau | Zuidam Distillers, Baarle-Nassau |
| Bottler | Blackadder International | Blackadder International |
| Distilled | December 16, 2016 | May 17, 2016 |
| Age | 6 years | 7 years |
| Cask | Ex-Oloroso sherry butt, full term | Ex-Pedro Ximenez sherry butt, full term |
| ABV | 57.7% | 57.3% |
| Peated | No | No |
| Outturn | 703 bottles | 747 bottles |
| Volume | 700ml | 700ml |
| Presentation | Cask strength, non-chill filtered, natural colour. Sold only as a two-bottle set. | |
