Welcome. Welcome back Everyone. It's been 5 days since my last review. Time for a new one. Today we are taking a look at a Swedish Single Malt Whisky coming from Mackmyra. It will be quite interesting let me assure you. If you follow me on Instagram or if you take a look at the left upper side of the page now, you can see that I have a new logo. A more personalized one. Shows my love for whisky and for our family dog Jennyfer, who brings us joy every single day. I hope you enjoy the new logo. I digress. Let's get into what Mackmyra really is about.

About the distillery

Mackmyra Whisky is a Swedish single malt whisky distillery. It is named after the village and manor of Mackmyra, where the first distillery was established, in the residential district of Valbo, south-west of Gävle. 

Mackmyra Svensk Whisky AB is a publicly traded company, listed in December 2011 on Nasdaq OMX's alternative-investment market First North. The company has about 45 employees with annual revenues of around SEK 100 million, and its biggest shareholder is the Swedish farmer's co-op Lantmännen.

Mackmyra's history started in 1998 at a Swedish winter resort, where eight friends from the Royal Institute of Technology met up for a ski trip. Noticing all of them had brought along a bottle of malt whisky for the host, a conversation started about the manufacturing of a Swedish whisky. 

The following year a company was founded, and after years of experimenting with 170 different recipes, they finally settled on two recipes in 2002. That same year a new distillery was built in the old mill and power station at Mackmyra, which went on stream in October. The first limited edition single malt whisky, Preludium 01, launched in February 2006 and sold-out in less than 20 minutes.

Mackmyra has two active distilleries. The first went on stream at Mackmyra in 2002, featuring a full-sized pot still from Forsyth's in Rothes, Scotland, Swedish stainless steel washbacks and a German mash tun, with a production capacity of 600,000 bottles a year. 

A second distillery, about 6 miles east of Mackmyra village, was built and went on stream in 2011. The project cost has been estimated at SEK 50 million, featuring two full-sized pot stills with a production capacity of 1.8 M bottles a year. It's seven storeys high, using gravity to power many internal processes within the distillery, resulting in about 45% less energy use compared to the first distillery.

All ingredients used in the production are sourced within a 75-mile radius from Mackmyra, except for the yeast, which is from Rotebro. The water undergoes a natural filtration process in an esker nearby and is only sterilized with a high-intensity UV light. The peat is from a local bog near Österfärnebo, and the distillery uses barley from Dalarna and Strömsta Manor in Enköping.

Mackmyra bottles all of its wares in their natural color, without additives, and ages their spirits in four different cask types: bourbon, sherry, Swedish oak and in a special signature cask made from classic American bourbon casks and Swedish oak. The whisky is generally matured 50 meters below ground in the disused Bodås Mine in Hofors.

Mackmyra Björksav Swedish Single Malt Whisky - Natural Color, Non-chill filtered, 46.1%

"Mackmyra Björksav is partly (20%) matured in birch wine barrels for between two and four years. Also called 'birch champagne', the wine is made by fermenting the sap extracted from the birch trunk together with sugar, yeast and lemon and maturing it in barrels. Birch sap is usually 'tapped' in the spring in Scandinavia, and the resulting wine has a finely tart, slightly acidic, fresh taste. The founders have immortalised themselves in the bottle design: For each of the eight friends, there is a dent - 'a fingerprint, so to speak' - in the lower part of the bottle."

Nose: Floral and fruity. Freshly cut grass and fresh fruits from the orchard such as pears, green apples and apricots. Slightly spicy. Peppers and ginger. Lots of vanilla and toffee. Sandalwood and some toasted bread. Waxy and vinous with grapes and raisins. Lots of wood notes aswell. Very nice malty base. A quite interesting nose.

Taste: Fruity and fresh, spicy with black pepper and ginger, oily and has lots of minerals. lots of vanilla, toffee and orchard fruits yet again. Very malty and very waxy.  Oak, honey, sandalwood and cedar, aniseed, white pepper and ginger. White grapes, yeast and toasted bread with butter. A very complex and interesting whisky in my opinion.

Finish: It's quite long and satisfying. Spicy, sweet and round at the same time. Pepper rush and ginger then sweet red apples and red grapes along with vanilla. Some wine notes and sultanas with dark chocolate. Quite nice.

Overall I think this whisky is very interesting. It's nice to see that they are not limited by the SMWA and they can mature in whatever they want. This gives a nice and fresh turn to the whisky industry. All in all it's very good but maybe a bit youthful. Which is not a problem to say the least but it would have been even nicer if it was aged for more. It's getting a solid 84 / 100. They can improve with time and be even better. If you van find it around 50 EUR don't hesitate to buy it. It's very cool.

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Thank you for reading! I hope you enjoyed it. To many more. Sláinte.