The Milk & Honey Distillery in Tel Aviv, Israel, is one of the latest distilleries amongst the so-called “new world” bunch to put its head above the parapet and call attention to itself. Like its colleagues in Taiwan, India, and even the likes of Australia, it’s a distillery in a hot climate country that is bending the barley to the beat of its own drum.
Milk & Honey was founded in 2012 and – again, like Kavalan in Taiwan – was shaped by the late Dr Jim Swan. One of Swan’s hallmarks was developing processes, systems, and strategies that typically bring whisky to maturation and market earlier than traditional methodologies, and Milk & Honey has benefitted accordingly.
Mind you, like the distilleries in other hot-climate countries, the reality is that the climate does a large chunk of that acceleration process for you. The trick, as Swan identified, is harnessing that faster maturation – creating both spirit and whisky that is balanced, rounded, and neither drying nor tannic. The other trick is capturing the whisky before the angels beat you to it…the angels’ share at Milk & Honey is around 9-11%!
The lie of the land…
Tel Aviv is on Israel’s western coast, directly fronting the Mediterranean and roughly 60km north-west of Jerusalem. Annual temperatures range from 16 to 40 degrees Celsius, and the city experiences roughly 300 sunny days a year. Humidity varies from 50-90% for most of the year, depending on the season. Needless to say, it’s a far cry from the conditions of Scotland – and yet the distillery has adopted the rules and regulations that govern the Scotch whisky industry. As such, they hold fast to the requirement that the spirit be aged for a minimum of three years and one day before calling it whisky – even though their spirit, given certain maturation treatments, can develop well before then. Which is worth exploring right now…
Israel is blessed to have an incredibly diverse and varied landscape, resulting in no less than five different climate zones! Conditions vary massively from the Mediterranean coast to the snow-capped mountains of the Upper Galilee, to the green Jerusalem mountains, to the desert, and then – the most extreme – the Dead Sea. The distillery exploits this natural quirk and has experimented by sending casks all over the country – duly discovering that the results and outcomes vary tremendously! (As a dramatic example, spirit matured at the Dead Sea takes on extraordinary oak development and colour when compared to identical spirit matured elsewhere. The vast majority of its casks slumber at home at the distillery where two main warehouses house over 2,500 casks.
The facts and the figures…
The distillery set-up and operation is very traditional, and anyone who’s visited a Scottish distillery will recognise the process and equipment, even if some of it (such as the stainless steel lauter mash tun which resembles a lunar landing module) looks space-age when compared to some of Scotland’s kit that’s still 19th century!
The distillery chiefly uses unpeated Concerto malt, although also does two weeks of peated runs each year with malt peated to 40ppm. The 1-tonne mashtun takes an hour to mash and processes two batches a day. There are four washbacks for fermentation, although plans are afoot to add two more in the near future. Fermentation is a long-ish 72 hours, contributing to a more estery wash that brings out some fruit in the subsequent spirit. Employing traditional double distillation, the wash still is 9,000 litres, feeding a 3,000 litre spirit still. The cut is unusually high, taken between 80% and 70%, resulting in a particularly oily spirit, which is filled primarily into ex-bourbon casks, although – ever adventurous and experimental – the distillery has a surprisingly large number of projects and campaigns with spirit filled into (kosher) sherry casks, Shaved-Toasted-Recharred casks (STR), Israeli wine casks, port casks, rye casks, rum casks, and even pomegranate wine casks! Current production has the distillery producing around 170,000 litres of pure alcohol per year.
Milk and Honey “Classic”
Having been in operation now for nearly eight years, the distillery has grown into its shoes and developed a core-range expression simply called “Classic”. Bottled at 46% ABV and non-chillfiltered, the current incarnation of Classic is made from a cask recipe that is roughly 75% ex-bourbon casks, 20% STR red wine casks, and 5% virgin oak. Whisky & Wisdom sat down with a dram of Classic and put it through its paces. Our thoughts as follows:
Nose: Herbal. Grassy. Soft malt and some sweetness. Opens up with time, revealing orchard fruits.
Palate: Sweet and fruity, there are hints of tropical fruits and red currants. With time, this develops into sweet pastries, perhaps even cinnamon rolls. The mouthfeel is oily, if not a little a hot.
Finish: The finish is clean, but very short and quite flat – there’s no development of flavour.
Comments: This is simple, pleasant drinking. The palate is not challenging, but it’s clean and develops nicely. The finish hints that there’s room and scope for some extra maturation and cask integration – something the distillery will readily achieve in the coming years. We can expect the average age of Classic to increase slightly over time. It’s still early days as the distillery plays around with the kaleidoscope of different whiskies and styles it has available. The climate and the commercial realities of evaporation mean that most Milk & Honey whisky is unlikely to go beyond seven years. Current indications are that most of their spirit will hit its peak at around five years.
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In addition to the Classic, Milk & Honey has other whiskies that it bottles under its Elements range. This is where you’ll find the likes of Sherry Cask, Peated Cask and the Israeli Red Wine Cask – all slated for release later in 2020.
Gin…
The distillery also produces two gins which are distilled from the same new make spirit that goes on to be whisky. The new make spirit is filled into a 250 litre alembic still where it is infused with the botanicals (a recipe of ingredients that proudly showcase its Israeli heritage) before distilling a third time to produce the gin. The regular make goes by the name of Levantine Gin. Whilst a tad sharp for this writer’s palate, the Oak-Aged gin was a genuine revelation and a delight to drink neat. Aged in an STR cask for 4-5 months, the gin takes on a small bit of colour but is significantly more settled and balanced.
With thanks to Alba Whisky, distributors of Milk & Honey in Australia.
Cheers,
AD
Images courtesy of Milk & Honey
