Highwayman 'The Dark Side' Peated PX / PX Stout Cask 55%abv 30ml
Highwayman 'The Dark Side' Peated PX / PX Stout Cask 55%abv 30ml
Highwayman got a lot of hype early on with charismatic industry personality Dan Woolley aka 'Mr Laphroaig Australia' breaking out from corporate whisky and chasing the dream of making his own in Byron Bay. Pretty epic narrative deserving of a man crush as it takes giant balls to go for it and achieve success in this kind of endeavour on a small budget. Starting with independently bottled whisky sourced from several distilleries and with tiny releases due to small format casks - a strong fear of FOMO was whipped up among 'Disciples of Dan' who rushed out to buy whatever was released - there were a few whiskies that were pretty bad as clearly there was a fair amount of experimentation as it takes time to understand how to manage barrels in a tropical setting. Anyway for fans that kept the faith, we now have whisky distilled in Byron Bay in large format barrels filled with new make at a lower abv and with some other tweaks to the program gained from trial and error that means there has been continual improvement up at Highwayman. Also Dan is not a timid soul and likes to tinker but now alchemy is taking place with interesting, fun and tasty whisky being made - personally I believe this a peated stout cask finish and the previous Highwayman release I stocked have been the best two releases yet and with the larger format casks its easier to get bottles now - initially the hype was created by the man and the story - now its fading but the whisky itself is now becoming worthy of the hype and there is more of it to drink which can only be a good thing. All that is needed is for the increase in production to translate to the price remaining the same but with 700ml bottles - then I will baptise myself in the waves of Byron and declare myself a 'Disciple of Dan'.
From the Highwayman website:-
Peated Highwayman spirit aged in 2 x 100L 1st fill PX casks for over 3 years then tipped and married together. The whisky was then filled into a 250L PX cask that was used to age an imperial stout for a final maturation. It was then bottled unfiltered at a cask strength of 55% producing 250 bottles.
This whisky is like salted dark chocolate black Forrest cake!
Dan's Tasting Notes