I spent the last few days digging through some of our old inventory at Mission, while jumping in behind the register in Sherman Oaks to help with the holiday rush (hence, why I’ve been off the blog for a bit). This morning when I got back to the Pasadena office, I asked my boss Vic what the deal was with twelve specific cases of Kavalan that seem to have been taken out of inventory.
“Not only are they not showing in stock,” I said, “they’re mislabeled. This is a private cask of Kavalan bottled exclusively for Mission, but they’re tagged as the standard Bourbon cask release.”
It turns out that Mission did indeed buy a single Bourbon cask of Kavalan a while back, sold through most of it, but forgot about the rest of it!
Let me tell you: there are few things more exciting than spelunking through a giant room full of booze and digging out lost treasures. I popped a bottle immediately. It was like dipping my nose into a huge vat of my mother-in-law’s flan—that’s Mexican custard, if you don’t know your flan.
I first went to Kavalan Distillery in 2014 as part of an Asian whisky expedition to Taiwan and Japan. I’ve never forgotten the experience. It was a hazy, humid morning when I woke up and started taking photos, the palm trees in the foreground with the lush green hills in the distance. It was balmy as all hell, which only made me think: “I wonder what this heat is doing to the whisky.”
Turns out, it’s pretty clear what the heat is doing once you taste the Kavalan expressions. The Sherry-aged malts are black like coffee. The Bourbon-aged malts are look like maple syrup. The heat not only forces the whiskey into the wood, it causes evaporation, reducing the water levels and concentrating the flavors even further (sort of like simmering a soup).
You wanna talk about concentration? Mission’s exclusive barrel #B101124004A is one of the fattest Bourbon-aged malts I’ve ever tasted. This whisky is simply oozing with creme brûlée and toasted coconut notes. And there’s a reason: Kavalan re-chars these American oak vessels, fills them with single malt, and then leaves them in a hot and humid sub-tropical environment to soak up all that sweet oak. This baby is so fat with tropical notes that you’d have thought it was finished in a rum barrel.
Now on my 17th sip, I can’t stress enough what a sheer joy this whisky is to drink. At $159.99, we’ve decided to price the whisky where it was back when Mission originally sold the barrel, rather than $200+ where some other sites seem to be for their editions. Breaking the barrel down into my new formula (why you want it, how it’s made, what is is), here’s the rundown:
WHY: Kavalan’s single barrel expressions, also known as the Solist series due to their virtuoso-like performances, have become the stuff of legend over the years and this single barrel exclusive for Mission is a future legend in the making. Absolutely brimming with toasted coconut, tropical fruit, honey, and creme brûlée, this whisky delivers all the concentrated flavor the Taiwanese distiller has become renowned for with dialed-up intensity at full proof.
HOW: Located in a sub-tropical climate with intense humidity, the conditions under which Kavalan ages its barrel are extremely warm, forcing the whisky into the wood with greater intensity and leading to higher evaporation. The whisky ages more rapidly as a result, leading to mouth-filled whiskies of extreme character. This particular whisky was aged in a single ex-Bourbon barrel, so the American oak flavor is jacked up to 11 in this one: vanilla, candy corn, coconut, and toasted oak. The nose is like dipping your face into a vat of Mexican flan custard.
WHAT: Founded in 2006, King Car Company’s Kavalan Distillery in Taiwan has been breaking the mold of single malt whisky expectations, crafting award-winning whiskies that mature faster and taste better than many of its counterparts, and are often bottled with a ferocity that exceeds the expectations of today’s modern whisky drinker. Exclusive single cask editions of Kavalan have become quite coveted, and often sell out in hours upon release. This whisky was bottled at 58.6% cask strength.
-David Driscoll