Old grains and peat in Irish malt

Waterford Feuille Morte 3

Waterford is bringing out a new Micro Cuvée, a malt based on an old forgotten Irish grain and their first peated malts.

The Waterford cuvées are assembled from different ‘Original Farm Origins’. They show us how an blend of different terroirs creates layers and complexity in the whisky even if it is still fairly young. Micro Cuvée Feuille Morte has not been released in Belgium, but we managed to get our hands on some bottles straight from the distillery.

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The Heritage series explores the aroma’s and flavours of old, forgotten grains. In this case they had to reintroduce Hunter barley, named after plant breeder Herbert Hunter who introduced it in 1959. It disappeared in the 1970’s superceded by more economically rewarding crosses, all that remained of Hunter was a 50 gram bag in the seed bank of the Irish Department of Agriculture, Food & the Marine.

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And last but not least we have two new Arcadian Series members Ballybannon 1.1 and Fenniscourt 1.1. Ballybannon is peated up to 47ppm, while Fenniscourt is up to 38ppm. The peat levels were chosen specifically for each farm to make sure the character of the terroir is not lost behind to much peat.