Review // Teerenpeli Distillery, an exploration of Finnish whisky
It was December 2018, one of those days in between Christmas and New Year’s. I was spending my holidays in Helsinki, Finland, and had arranged a private tasting at the Teerenpeli pub in Kamppi, Helsinki. I had a fantastic evening. This year, I was not able to go to Finland, but Teerenpeli came to me! In this article, I’m revisiting the Teerenpeli core range. Now that my palate has matured a bit, I’m hoping to discover more about their various expressions.
The award-winning team, whisky and beers in hand. As it should be.
Text by Mickaël Van Nieuwenhove
Photography is © Teerenpeli
The Story of Teerenpeli
I’m having an online tasting with Samuli Korhonen (General Manager at Teerenpeli Brewery & Distillery), Jussi Oinas (Senior Teerenpeli Whisky Ambassador), and Johan Laermans (Purchase & Sales Director at Young Charly). The aim is to brush up on my Teerenpeli knowledge and to find out what has happened to the brand in the past two years. Their Kulo expression won “Best Whisky” at the 2020 UISGE Whisky Festival in Helsinki, and scored a 98/100 in another competition. Their brand was even awarded Worldwide Whiskey Producer of the year, 2020 by the IWSC (International Wine & Spirit Competition).
The people of the family-owned brewery and distillery are intensely proud, and rightly so. Whisky lovers from across the world are starting to notice something is happening in ‘the land of a thousand lakes’. Demand is rising, even mid-Covid-19, and the distillery is aiming to produce around 100,000l new make (or in between 60-70,000 bottles) in 2021.
Their secret? According to Samuli Korhonen, the distillery in Lahti (South Finland) has access to excellent ground water, fantastic local barley, a quality malting factory, and more than useful climate conditions for whisky maturation. Almost every step of the process is done locally, except for the harvest of peat and the smoking of the malted barley, which is done in Scotland and in Belgium (Castle Malting)! Currently, the distillery is expanding by constructing a new visitor’s center, and by partially renovating the distillery. By May 2021, we should all be able to go visit the distillery and see every step of the whisky-making process ourselves. For now, we’ll have to make do with the 4 single malt expressions that are readily available: Kaski, Teerenpeli 10 year old, Savu, and Kulo.
Kaski (100% Sherry Cask)
The Kaski expression saw its first day of production in 2012. Initially, the distillery only wanted to make a single batch of this whisky, and wrote down bottle numbers on the label. The expression gained so much popularity with Finnish whisky enthusiasts, however, that Teerenpeli decided to continue producing batches. After more than 20,000 bottles, the bottle number was replaced by the batch number.
Up to this day, the Kaski expression is still the best selling whisky in their range, closely followed by Kulo. When asked about the reason for this, Jussi Oinas explains that this whisky is similar in ‘nature’ to cognac, which is very popular in Finland, and that’s why Finns like this. A simple answer to a simple question. Have I mentioned that I like talking to Finns?
The name “Kaski” refers to an old Finnish agricultural practice of burning a field in other to prepare it for a new cycle of farming. By burning the ground, fertility is brought back. Rather fitting as a first expression, isn’t it?
Kaski is about 6 years old when it is bottled, and during those 6 years, it has been matured on PX and Oloroso casks. A 100% sherry cask maturation? As a first expression? These people are bold. Each batch yields about 2,000l, which results in about 4,000 bottles of whisky. Because of the different sizes of barrels that are used, stronger flavors are able to nestle themselves into the new make.
Those ‘stronger flavors’ are actually not that ‘strong’ in the sense that the ABV is very high. At 43%, this whisky is nice and smooth, with scents of butter and brown sugar drifting up from your glass, eager to fill the room you are sitting in. There’s also red fruits, raisins, and a little bit of a nutty flavor (think pecan).
The first thing I picked up when I tasted this dram was that it really is nicely warming, mellow, and smooth. Being a rather liquid-y whisky, it ‘all goes down well’, but I strongly advise you to take your time while tasting this expression. After the ‘warm’ flavors, there’s room for a drier element, followed by a sweeter note. There’s a bit of spice, and some wood notes as well. Everything is brought together in a slightly spicy & dry but gentle drawn-out finish, which at the end gives up a puff of smoke.
Teerenpeli 10 year old
Next, we tasted the 10 year old expression, which recently received a visual upgrade. The label is now more in line with the rest of the core range. According to Korhonen and Oinas, this is more of a ‘big boys whisky’, focusing on whisky enthusiasts who are used to more layered whiskies, which often comes with age. When it was released in 2015, this was the first 10 year old single malt whisky produced in Finland. Now, 5 years later, the hype has not yet died down, which comes as no surprise.
At 43% ABV, this marriage of sherry - (15%) and bourbon casks (85%) has a different structure than the other expressions. It is a whisky that is not as straightforward, but instead more subtle, more fluent, and even more complex. It’s a whisky that glides over hardwood floors wearing wool socks, at night, with its eyes closed.
The scents are diminished in a sense, with more butterscotch and caramel, with brushes of shaved wood curls and just a memory of vanilla. There’s some hay in there too, though it might identify as freshly cut grass as well. There’s still that warm note, but it’s different in DNA.
This whisky sticks a bit more to the tongue than Kaski, which immediately turns this into an expression that builds on itself with each consecutive sip. There’s the vanilla that is also in the nose, but it’s a bit more spicy now. A bitter touch of malt turns this expression into something very unique, and I wonder if this could be a good whisky to sip when enjoying some of Teerenpeli’s beers. I might have to ask if they can send me a couple of bottles. The finish is medium-long, warming, and leaves the tongue with a mix of dryness and a bitter, as found in a good pale ale.
Kulo (7 y/o Sherry Cask)
The third whisky in the tasting journey was Kulo, their award-winning, gold medal, 98/100 scoring powerhouse of flavors, big brother to Kaski (with maturation on PX and Oloroso too) and second-to-none in the Nordic whiskies scene. Conceptualized as a ‘whisky for the whisky lovers that prefer higher ABVS’, this is the only core range whisky that is not 43% ABV, but instead 50.7% ABV.
If you ask why this is specifically 50.7% ABV, then you get another simple and honest Finnish answer: because of taxation and alcohol laws. It turns out that you have to register alcohol percentages with the Alko chain (the government-controlled shops that sell beer, wine, and spirits), which they also have to approve. Every alcohol percentage is taxed in a different way. Obviously, the higher your ABV, the more taxes you need to pay. Teerenpeli currently has 4 registered alcohol percentages: 43%, 50.7%, 58.5%, and 61.7%, the final two being reserved for private cask releases.
The Kulo was originally meant to be a limited release for a select amount of people (travel sale only), but because of the shitty year we’ve all been having, Teerenpeli decided to include this into the core range. This was before their whisky won that prestigious prize. Call it a brilliant spark of marketing, or just sheer luck. It’s probably a mix of the two.
Though not cask strength, this expression is certainly ‘a step up’ from the other releases, focusing even further on complexity and layers of flavors. To me, this is the ‘deep dive’ expression in the core range, by which I mean that the only way to properly explore its many facets, is by simply diving in. No careful nosing, no little drops on the tongue. Go for it, and let this expression develop itself. Let it do its thing.
In the nose, this dram is very similar to its little brother Kaski, but you can immediately smell that it is more rounded out, more brooding, and literally stronger in the nose. The sweetness, the fruits, the delicate smoke, they’re all more pronounced and noticeably more present. There’s even a bit of sugar cane in there, which reminded me of a good rum. The warming feeling is not simply a blanket, it’s a fireplace in the next room. Interesting note: if you take a droplet and rub it in between your fingers, there’s a note of vanilla ice cream that is otherwise not noticeable.
Kulo tastes like it’s a beefed up Kaski, with more room for malt to take a more prominent spot on the palate. The red fruits are suppressed by dried (and slightly crystalized) raisins, the kind you get in raisin bread. This is also a drier expression, with a finish that is long-lasting and rewarding. It wraps itself around your tongue, and offers up a sensation that is in between a strong tingle and a soft burn. That’s the stuff.
Savu (Peated Single Malt)
Lastly, we tasted Savu, the Finnish word for “smoke”. We dial down in ABV, returning to the familiar 43%. This whisky was matured in predominantly bourbon casks (80%), with a small influence of Oloroso casks (20%). Since smoked malts are unavailable in Finland (there’s no one doing it), the peat is harvested in the UK, and transported to Belgium, where it is used to smoke the malt by a company called Castle Malting. In this way, there’s a little bit of Belgium in every bottle.
On the nose, there are elements of poster paint, smoke drifting in the wind, and even a sour note reminding me of buttermilk. The smoke in itself is more linked to a ‘smoke sauna’ than a campfire. There’s more soot than smoke, like a ‘blackened’ spot where previously you had an open fire. Together with a surprisingly sweeter note, this is a peated single malt (35ppm) that is unlike the Scottish varieties we are all so accustomed to.
I notice that this expression is again a bit more liquid-y, which probably is a result of the lower ABV. The smoke develops further in the flavor, and it has a more spicy undertone in it. There’s a little bit of fruit here, reminding me of plum jelly, and there’s also a slow dance of sweet and sour, albeit very subtle. At the end, I get a little bit of blue grape.
Similar to the 10 year old, this is a whisky that gradually reveals itself, not layer upon layer, but more like a corridor leading to the heart of the spirit. In my head, I am walking down smoky mist, and the further I go, the more it engulfs me. The heart is the sherry cask influence, I think. It would have been a dull expression if it had simply been matured on bourbon casks. Yay for this!
Conclusion
After I had tasted all of the expressions, I took some time to individually taste the expressions during consecutive evenings, and I did a third tasting where I tasted all of the expressions in a row again. It’s difficult to pick a favorite, although the Kulo and Savu are currently coming to mind. Those would be my 2 recommendations if I could only pick 2.
Regardless of my personal favorites, I can honestly say that these expressions are of high quality, and that they have to potential to at least make the most skeptical whisky lover go ‘huh, I did not expect that’. To me, that’s a sign of individuality. It’s the start of the ‘Teerenpeli identity’, which is more ‘Nordic whisky’ and less ‘Scotch copy’. The people at Teerenpeli clearly know what they are doing, and I hope they continue to pour their collective heart and soul into every bottle.
