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Ballykeefe Distillery is a small independent family-owned distillery located on the Ging family farm in County Kilkenny, Ireland. Founded in 2016 as a way to diversify the family’s long-running agricultural business, Ballykeefe grows, harvests, mills and distils its own barley on-site, producing whiskey in the traditional Irish style of triple distillation. In that sense, the distillery follows the kind of “field-to-glass” or single estate approach that has become increasingly fashionable lately, alongside better-known names like Lochlea and Daftmill. In fact, this whiskey reminds me tremendously of what I’ve tried from both distilleries, with an intensely cereal-forward and farmy profile. But unlike those two, Ballykeefe seems more interested in pricing the whiskey according to the actual value of the product. At €30, I simply couldn’t resist! Let’s see what it has to offer:
On the nose, it’s incredibly intense right from the start. Massive, penetrating notes of farmy, earthy and cereal funk. Mossy silage, dusty cereals, hay, farm animals, pine resin, freshly cut grass fermenting under the sun, homemade yogurt, sourdough starter, wet soil. Crazy stuff. Supporting all this are hints of white grapes, apple, ripe banana and perfume. In the background, metallic and candy-like notes typical of very young whiskey.
On the palate, it’s explosively barley-forward. Fresh barley, digestive biscuits, Japanese sake, sorghum? The yeasty notes from the barley are completely off the charts, mixed with notes of sheep wool. Then come explosive herbal notes: lots of pine needles, cedar and eucalyptus, sliding into toasted weirdness, like sun-dried grandma herbs and very stale toffee. Surrounding everything is a deeply earthy sensation, almost like cultivated soil. Pineapple yogurt, lemon peel, hard candy and the most subtle vanilla in the world try to drag this charming delirium back into more orthodox territory, but fail completely.
The finish is just as overwhelming as the rest. Full-blown farmy, cereal, herbal and yeasty weirdness. Here the oak becomes slightly more noticeable, with some white pepper and dusty wood. More similar to a homemade herbal liqueur or oak-matured gin than to almost any whiskey I’ve ever tried.
Raw barley, pine needles and farm animals… you have to give the Ging family credit: they’ve genuinely managed to distinguish themselves in the completely saturated whiskey market, which can’t be easy. This is an extremely young whiskey that more or less presents the distillate almost naked. This is nowhere near the typical light and neutral Irish whiskey profile, but rather a truly farmy, herbal and rustic bomb packed with weird notes I’ve never encountered before. It feels like the total opposite of industrial profiles like Kilkerran Distillery or Ballechin. Unfortunately, I think this is probably the most new-make-y whiskey I’ve ever tried, and I’ve tried Abasolo, a Mexican “whiskey” matured for only two years. The cask influence here is absolutely minimal.
Still, overall, this Ballykeefe is an acceptable, interesting and above all different whiskey; I think its entire purpose is to stand out through its heterodox, shocking and almost indescribable character rather than to be conventionally pleasant or particularly suitable for sipping neat, and if that’s the goal, then I suppose it’s a complete success. It has a sort of small-scale local spirit vibe that actually reminds me a bit of Spanish whiskey (for example, Catalonia Single Malt). A 10 or 12yo version could become a genuinely interesting alternative to Daftmill 12. But in my opinion, the distillate feels completely untamed and extraordinarily difficult to domesticate, so I genuinely wish them luck with that task.
TL;DR: Extremely young, raw and farmy Irish whiskey full of barley, yeast, pine needles and earthy weirdness. Almost no cask influence, but very distinctive and surprisingly fun for €30. A chaotic but memorable experiment in “field-to-glass” whiskey. Totally unorthodox.
On the nose, it’s incredibly intense right from the start. Massive, penetrating notes of farmy, earthy and cereal funk. Mossy silage, dusty cereals, hay, farm animals, pine resin, freshly cut grass fermenting under the sun, homemade yogurt, sourdough starter, wet soil. Crazy stuff. Supporting all this are hints of white grapes, apple, ripe banana and perfume. In the background, metallic and candy-like notes typical of very young whiskey.
On the palate, it’s explosively barley-forward. Fresh barley, digestive biscuits, Japanese sake, sorghum? The yeasty notes from the barley are completely off the charts, mixed with notes of sheep wool. Then come explosive herbal notes: lots of pine needles, cedar and eucalyptus, sliding into toasted weirdness, like sun-dried grandma herbs and very stale toffee. Surrounding everything is a deeply earthy sensation, almost like cultivated soil. Pineapple yogurt, lemon peel, hard candy and the most subtle vanilla in the world try to drag this charming delirium back into more orthodox territory, but fail completely.
The finish is just as overwhelming as the rest. Full-blown farmy, cereal, herbal and yeasty weirdness. Here the oak becomes slightly more noticeable, with some white pepper and dusty wood. More similar to a homemade herbal liqueur or oak-matured gin than to almost any whiskey I’ve ever tried.
Raw barley, pine needles and farm animals… you have to give the Ging family credit: they’ve genuinely managed to distinguish themselves in the completely saturated whiskey market, which can’t be easy. This is an extremely young whiskey that more or less presents the distillate almost naked. This is nowhere near the typical light and neutral Irish whiskey profile, but rather a truly farmy, herbal and rustic bomb packed with weird notes I’ve never encountered before. It feels like the total opposite of industrial profiles like Kilkerran Distillery or Ballechin. Unfortunately, I think this is probably the most new-make-y whiskey I’ve ever tried, and I’ve tried Abasolo, a Mexican “whiskey” matured for only two years. The cask influence here is absolutely minimal.
Still, overall, this Ballykeefe is an acceptable, interesting and above all different whiskey; I think its entire purpose is to stand out through its heterodox, shocking and almost indescribable character rather than to be conventionally pleasant or particularly suitable for sipping neat, and if that’s the goal, then I suppose it’s a complete success. It has a sort of small-scale local spirit vibe that actually reminds me a bit of Spanish whiskey (for example, Catalonia Single Malt). A 10 or 12yo version could become a genuinely interesting alternative to Daftmill 12. But in my opinion, the distillate feels completely untamed and extraordinarily difficult to domesticate, so I genuinely wish them luck with that task.
TL;DR: Extremely young, raw and farmy Irish whiskey full of barley, yeast, pine needles and earthy weirdness. Almost no cask influence, but very distinctive and surprisingly fun for €30. A chaotic but memorable experiment in “field-to-glass” whiskey. Totally unorthodox.
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