Tasting: Slyrs Bavarian Single Malt 3 yo

Dram data:
Distillery: Slyrs
Bottler: Original bottling
Distilled: – (unknown)
Bottled: –
Age: 3 years
Limitation: –
Casks: American white oak
Alcohol: 43%
probably chill-filtered; uncoloured

Tasting notes:
Colour: light honey
Wow, a premiere! The first German single malt whisky I’m reviewing on this blog. And the first time I’m trying Slyrs. So let’s dive right into it…
The nose is… interesting. Not you usual single malt, light yet with a very dense, tightly interwoven flavour profile, quite sweet with a touch of oak right up front. This reminds me more of a dry Cognac (with added wood extract) than of a malt-based distillate. Vanilla, fresh oak staves, grape distillate with a touch of bitter seeds, dusty, dried apricot, banana chips and a young-spirit metallic note in the background. Pleasant enough but not exactly my style and not made for prologued sniffing. The palate is quite dry and surprisingly hot/alcoholic for 43% ABV on the arrival! Chili catch with a typical American white oak sweetness following behind and…. a dusty note. Dusty oak without being woody if that makes any sense. Apricots and white, dry, hairy peaches. Oh, and there’s the metallic note again. That’s, well, not very well-balanced, a tad rough and just generally weird if you keep it in your mouth for longer than just a few seconds. Quite fine for quick drinking, but we are amongst whisky lovers here, so higher standards apply. The medium long finish is unspectacular and light, it glides down very gently with just a touch of vanilla sweetness, light spices and the already established oaky but not woody note (just like oak extract in Congac…). A hint of yeast towards the end.

Verdict:
Oh dear, that didn’t go too well, now did it? The nose was quite decent but the weird, dusty, metallic palate killed the experience for me. It’s not bad spirit, far from it, it’s a very decent whisky if you drink it somewhat quickly like it is tradition in Bavaria to have a Schnaps after a fat pork roast. However, as a stand-alone single malt whisky I want to spend half an hour or an hour with to relax in the evening it doesn’t quite cut it and probably needs a few more years in (refill) casks to mellow down. They also released two batches of 12-year-olds so far which would be interesting to taste but I fear all the bottles went to collectors. There’s also a new “Slyrs Classic” on the market now which is supposedly better than the previous 3-year-olds, one of which I reviewed here. Pity the sample doesn’t state which edition it was…

Score: 62/100
(Nose: 68 Palate: 52 Finish: 64)

Thanks to Keith Wood for passing on the sample (you didn’t miss much)!