Visiting our Nagu Distillery whisky cask

An early start from Espoo

It was an early morning in Espoo. After helping with the kids, I quickly drove our electric car to maintenance in Helsinki. I got a hybrid as a replacement, which meant I could forget all the charging strategies I had planned and simply start driving 🏎️

I picked up my friend from Ekenäs, had a coffee and we headed towards Nagu. Once we got off the highway and got closer to Pargas, we started to see some beautiful scenery. When we finally arrived in Nagu, I had driven around 275 km and spent almost four hours behind the wheel.

Nagu Distillery's new premises

Nagu is a small place, so the new distillery is easy to spot on the left side of the road when arriving in the centre. The new premises were built where the old Nagu Korv och Spik used to be. There is plenty of parking and you enter through the terrace.

The inside is one big open space where you can order drinks, hang out and see what is happening on the production side. We got a tour of the distillery and saw what they had been working on.

Down to the cask cellar

After the production tour, we headed downstairs. The stairway was still very much under renovation, but it led us to the cellar where some of the casks are stored 👀

As soon as the cellar door opened, we were hit by wave of a lovely whisky smell! Only a small part of Nagu Distillery's casks were stored there, but luckily our cask was one of them.

Finally meeting our cask

We got to taste the contents of our cask and also filled a small bottle to take home for a more focused tasting. I find it hard to give any useful judgement on the spot. The "whisky", or distillate as it technically still is, had been ageing in the barrel for two years and two months.

My first quick impression was that it was sweet, maybe with a hint of elderflower. I know the taste is probably what most of you are interested in, so I will sit down with the sample in peace and update this post with proper tasting notes later 👌

A few other things to taste

Our cask was not the only thing we tasted. We also tasted fresh distillate and whisky from another cask using the same base distill. We also tried a whisky which, if I remember correctly, was made by distilling a failed batch of beer from Kimito Brewing.

The Kimito beer-based whisky was quite unusual and did not taste like traditional whisky, probably because of the hops, but was still very enjoyable. I heard that you might be able to grab a bottle of that later this year if you are lucky 😉

Nagu Distillery has also started selling their own beer. They do not brew it themselves: the ingredients come from the nearby area, while the brewing is done by Stallhagen in Åland. It clearly tasted like a Stallhagen beer, which was not a bad thing, but I had hoped for a unique Nagu flavour profile. I am not sure if the malts are similar because both places are in the archipelago, or if the familiar taste comes more from the equipment and Stallhagen's brewing know-how. We still bought several cans to take home, as they were cheaper at the distillery than in the nearby stores 💁‍♂️

Lunch at Söder

After the tour and tastings, we went for lunch at a nearby burger place called Söder. I had last visited around four or five years ago and the quality was still just as good. The food also offered really good bang for the buck.

We made a quick stop by the harbour and its small stalls before getting back on the road.

Kimito Brewing and distillery

On the way back we stopped at Kimito Brewing. They were open, so we bought a few beers and also got a tour of the brewery. The brewery smell immediately reminded me of the old brewing days with TLK Bryggeriklubben.

They also have a distillery, which I did not know before the visit. They are not planning to make whisky, though, as they do not believe producing it would be profitable for them.

The story behind the cask

If you missed the earlier post, you can read more about the shared Nagu Distillery cask and how this all started.