Tag Archives: Lost Spirits

Lost Spirits Abominations: Crying of the Puma & Sayers of the Law

1 Reply

Lost Spirits are a Californian Distillery (Yeah, USA California) producing American whiskey, Rum and other spirits including some interesting whisky under the Abomination brand. Why Abomination? Because what they did here is very unique and different, harnessing their technology to create them. They got some 45-55 ppm peated whisky from Islay, aged for 12-18 months in Bourbon casks before crossing the ocean to California. Some late-harvest Riesling seasoned oak staves were added and then those young spirits were  ‘tortured’ by the Lost Spirits Reactor for a few days. The reactor bombs the whisky with light, pressure, oxygen and who know what else, all to fast track the aging process – maybe even up to 15 years in a few days.

Both Abominations were named after a chapter of the island of Dr. Moreau and the difference between them is that Crying of the Puma was ‘reacted’ with Toasted Oak staves while Sayers of the Law was ‘reacted’ with Heavily charred Oak Staves (late harvest Riesling seasoned oak in both cases).

So does the reactor really works? How does it taste with speed aging?

Lost Spirits Abomination – Crying of the Puma (54%, £56.75)

Nose: Unmistakably Islay peat, malt, sweet vanilla and concentrated wood extracts like bourbon , soft sweet smoke. Continue reading →

Advertisement

Whisky Review and Tasting Notes: Lost Spirits Leviathan II

2 Replies

Craft whisky is one hot buzzword and many small-scale distilleries pop-up around the globe producing said craft whisky.

Today I’ll review an american single malt whiskey from Lost Spriits comapny, the brainchild of Bryan Davis, the second batch of their Leviathan whisky, formally known as Leviathan II.

What we have here is American malted barley, peated with Canadian peat to a 110 ppm, distilled in  a wooden pot still and filled into Semillon (Late harvest Californian wine) casks and bottled at pretty young age.

Wow, that’s a very ambitious and mind boggling whisky, ain’t it? So many unfamiliar variables are involved here.

The peat is from a Canadian evergreen peat bog so not like Islay or Scottish peat at all – no heather, no moss or seaweed. Instead we’ll get conifer and other trees and that will add different and unique flavours to the equation here. 110 ppm is quite high, putting it on a par with the ultra peated Islay whiskies.

The wood still means there’s more wood impact here – not only from the cask but from the distillation process too.

The wine casks adds another layer of flavours, and the casks being made of French oak means there’s additional spiciness.

So many untested-before variables were meshed together here to create this whisky. Hmm, let’s go ahead and try it…

Lost Spirits Leviathan II (53%, €87)

leviathan IINose: Strong vegetal note is welcoming us at first, then there’s sweet peat with very little smoke, seaweed and kelp, salt. There’s also vanilla and sweet white wine from the Semillon casks. A few minutes in the glass  reveals big time peat notes and BBQ grill smell. Continue reading →