Greenspot Single Pot Still Whiskey Review

Hi everyone,

An Irish whiskey from me today, Greenspot. I kept an eye out for this because it’s in my 101 whiskies from Ian Buxton.

A lot of Irish whiskey is blended but this is a single pot still whiskey, meaning that the whiskey is from one distillery (in this case Midleton Distillery) and made with a mix of malted and unmalted barley.

Does anyone know if they mean barley that is completely unmalted? Or ‘green’ malt (been through steeping and germination but not kiln dried)?

I’m no expert on Irish whiskey but I would have thought that the lack of malting the barley would protect the starch in the protein matrix and cell walls that malting breaks down, making the starch more inaccessible to the action of enzymes to break it down into sugars??? Whereas Green malt is very active in enzymes, even more so than malted barley.

Hopefully someone can help?
EDIT: Someone on Facebook pointed me to the Redbeast website, where you can find that Unmalted barley means just that, dried barley taken straight to the distillery.

Anyway, the whiskey:

Greenspot 40%

Colour: Gold

Body: Light

Nose: Sugary, Mr. Kipling Country Slices, sugar crystals, light malt, sponge cake, icing, orange marmalade, some jam, very light oak, treacle tart, pear tart. A floral note with sweet rose. A waxy oily fruitiness after some time.

Taste: Very light. Tonnes of sugary treats and cakes, maybe a little weak. Slightly oily, Mr. Kipling Country Slices again (God they're delicious, stewed pears, light malt, building orange marmalade and light oak, very light cinnamon, icing sugar, some orange.

Finish: Medium length. Orange marmalade hit then light spice.

Could do with 46% but a very nice Irish whiskey.

71/100

Thanks for reading!

Review #344

Network Average: 74.5

Best Score: 92

Worst Score: 44

0-49 Terrible

50-59 Bad

60-64 Just About OK

65-69 Ok to Good

70-74 Good

75-79 Very Good

80-84 Excellent

85-89 Superb

90+ Magnificent

Full Disclosure Disclaimer: I currently work as a Brand Ambassador for Penderyn Distillery. The views expressed here are purely my own and do not reflect the views of Penderyn Distillery or The Welsh Whisky Company. I try to maintain as much objectivity as I can but feel free to take my reviews with as big a pinch of salt as you like. Furthermore, I have never accepted free samples from anyone in the whisky industry, but have bought bottles or samples with my money, bringing a different set of biases. Also, my rating scale is NOT based on a Parker type wine scoring scale or a school/college/university % or A-F grade score. I apologise for any seemly low or 'bad' scores given with my system and am sorry I can't say only nice things. Please keep in mind that I am ethically compromised and am unable to produce 100% unbiased reviews.

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