Belgrove Peated Rye Whisky Review!

 A crazy rye whisky from Tasmania's crazy Belgrove Distillery. And yes, it's peated! Crazy!

I don't often reach for rye whiskies / whiskeys, but when I do, it's usually a Belgrove! Peter Bignell's (pictured above) Belgrove Distillery is a tiny farm distillery located near Kempton in central Tasmania. From his standard Rye Whisky to the likes of cask strength rye whiskies aged in ex-Heartwood casks, rye whiskies aged in ex-Tasmanian red wine barrels, and the even more 'out there' bottlings like oat whiskies and the infamous 'Wholly Shit', using grain smoked with sheep dung and since made famous by non-other than Gordon Ramsay, Peter's products are not easily forgotten. Once you've met Peter and visited the distillery, which is still very much a working sheep farm, and seeing the grain growing in the fields, all in a beautiful natural setting, it really completes the picture. This is also one of the world's most sustainable distilleries, using recycled and repurposed equipment and materials wherever possible, including catching the rainwater from the farm buildings' roofs, and heating the copper pot still - which Peter made himself - with used fryer oil from nearby takeaway food shops. It's also one of the hidden gems of the Tasmanian whisky industry, and if you're headed down that way and are looking for a completely unpolished distillery visit where things are done differently, I can't recommend it enough. To my knowledge this is the only whisky distillery in Australia using equipment like a repurposed commercial clothes dryer as a malting drum, and a mash filter rather than a conventional mash tun, plus a direct-fired oil- or biodiesel-burning copper pot still that is controlled using a repurposed kitchen mixer. There's technically no visitor's centre or regimented tour schedule, but email Peter ahead (check out belgrovedistillery.com.au) and see if he can show you around. 

I've reviewed a couple of rye whiskies in the past, namely from Copper Fox Distillery in the U.S, and one from Belgrove. You might be forgiven for thinking that all rye whiskies are the same, and that they've simply substituted barley for rye grain and called the spirit a rye whisky. But in reality there are a myriad of differences between the many rye whiskies / whiskeys that are out there, and while American rye whiskeys are still the most easily accessed and the most familiar to most 'brown liquor' drinkers, the regulations governing rye whiskeys offer a great deal of leeway. For example, to call your American whiskey a rye whiskey, you only need to use 51% rye grain in your mash bill (mix of grains), with the remainder being any other grain - most commonly corn, wheat or barley. There are also limits on the distillation strength and filling strength, but the basic gist of things is that these regulations are a copy of those used for bourbon whiskey, but with a minimum of 51% rye grain rather than the minimum of 51% corn that is required for bourbon. And like bourbon there is no minimum age requirement, unless you also want to use the word 'straight' on your labels and marketing, which then means you cannot blend your spirit with other types, and requires a minimum age of two years. Most of those are produced in efficient column stills or continuous stills rather than pot stills. The rye whiskies (note the different spelling) made in Australia are a little different. 

While Belgrove has been producing rye whiskies for many years and was the first to do so in Australia, quite a few Australian rye whiskies have hit the market since. The likes of Sydney's Archie Rose, regional Victoria's Backwoods Distilling Co, Melbourne's Gospel, and Western Australia's Great Southern Distilling Company (also referred to as Limeburners) - although the latter two chose to use the 'whiskey' spelling - have all released rye spirits that have gained solid reputations. Aside from Melbourne's Gospel, all the above use pot stills to distill their rye spirits, and a couple - mostly Archie Rose and Belgrove - are using 100% rye grain in their mash recipes. As far as regulations go, our advantage is the two-year minimum age requirement for both whisky and whiskey. So if your bottle of Australian rye whiskey / whisky is labelled as such, it is at least two years old. If it's labelled simply as 'rye' though, or simply as 'malt' or 'single malt' for that matter, without mention of whisky or whiskey, all or at least some of the contents will be too young to meet that minimum age requirement. 

There's only one peated rye whisky produced in Australia though, and that's what we're looking at today. Belgrove have only produced four different batches of this unique spirit, with the first iteration that was largely an experiment debuted back in late 2014 - followed by a three-year wait for the second batch. Some of those releases have been single casks, some have been cask strength and some have been watered down slightly. But all have been made from 100% rye grain, a mix of both malted and un-malted, where some or all of the malted rye was dried using peat smoke - which happens in Peter's repurposed commercial clothes dryer, remember! The Belgrove Peated Rye Whisky that we're looking at today is from the latest release, Batch 4, which was bottled in August 2020. It was bottled at 50% ABV, and is non-chill filtered and naturally coloured. Surprisingly it's still available at the time of writing, straight from Peter's website (click here) for $155 AUD (500ml), which is a very reasonable price.

Belgrove Peated Rye Whisky, NAS, 50%. Kempton, Tasmania. 

100% rye grain, the malted portion smoked with Tasmanian peat. Approx. 3 years old. Non-chill filtered, natural colour.  

Colour: Pale amber. 

Nose: Spicy, nutty & smoky. Rye bread dough (think slightly yeasty), over-toasted grains and some coffee grounds. Sweet & warm buttery caramel, a couple of cloves and cold, spicy smoke. A touch of ash underneath. Slight hint of spearmint around the edges, but far less prominent than I've found in many other Belgrove whiskies. 

Texture: Medium weight, full-flavoured. Smoky rather than peaty. Slight touch of heat but it works nicely. 

Taste: That buttery caramel again, but it's also milky here. Toasted rye bread, a slight spirit heat but it fades very quickly. Dry roasted peanuts, ashy cold smoke again that seems more wood smoke rather than peat smoke. Maybe down to the composition of the peat? Touch of semi-sweet milk chocolate too. 

Finish: Medium length. Still quite smoky, and the rye spice returns with more milky caramel. Roasted nuts and that semi-sweet milk chocolate. Slight hints of spearmint and honey around the edges, and still quite smoky with that cold, ashy smoke. Mouth-watering!

Score: 3.5 out of 5. 

Notes: Delicious stuff, and it's pretty unique, but not in a particularly outlandish way - provided you're familiar with both smoky whiskies and rye whiskies, anyway! It's surprisingly smoky in fact, and the cold and ashy smoke works well with the spicy & nutty rye grain. In fact I've found Belgrove's rye whiskies to be some of the most rye-forward examples that I've tried, and by that I mean you can actually taste the grain itself, like younger Bruichladdichs or Springbanks often do well in the Scotch malt whisky world. And in my mind that's what you want when you're drinking a rye whisky / whiskey, rather than overt cask influence / wood influence or too much sweetness - which is why I much prefer rye whiskies / whiskeys to bourbon whiskeys!

This bottle has become much more balanced after first opening a couple of months ago, and the smoke has calmed down - it was actually bordering on too smoky when first opened, since the smoke was so dominant that the other notes were almost hidden from view. Now there's a great interplay of smoke, rye grain, toasty and caramel notes that combine into something delicious! This is a unique whisky, but it's not as outlandish, or as "dirty", "funky" or farmyard-y as some of the Belgrove whiskies that I've previously tasted, which could be down to the peat? Regardless, if you're a fan of both smoky whiskies and rye whiskies, then this is a must-try. Great value for money at this price too. More of these please Peter!

Cheers!