Al fresco Whisky & Cheese?
With our summer festival approaching in July, we thought we’d bring a touch of the outdoors for our 3rd collaboration with Love Cheese this month.
What could go wrong?
Well high ☀️+🌦️+💧meant a bit of flip flopping between indoors and outdoors before the brollies went up and we had attendees sipping whisky indoors and outdoors in our first multi-location simultaneous tasting!
We presented:
- Waterford The Cuvée (50%, £84) served with Langres, a French cheese from the plateau of Langres in the region of Champagne-Ardenne.
- Cooper King Transatlantic (48%, £85) served with aged Reypenaer Dutch Gouda.
- SPEY Spirit of Speyside Festival Whisky (2022) (£88.30 / 58.3%) served with venison salami.
- The One Manzanilla (46.6% / £38) served with Comté, a French cheese made from unpasteurized cow’s milk in the Franche-Comté region of eastern France.
- Ardnahoe 5yo Inaugural Release (50% / £70) served with Montgomery Cheddar.
- Mackmyra Stjarnrok (46.1% / £65) served with Cashel Blue, an artisanal blue cheese from Tipperary, Ireland.
🥃 Dram of the afternoon was a tie between the Spey 2022 festival release and the inaugural Ardnahoe release.
🧀 Cheese of the afternoon was Reypenaer Dutch Gouda (by a hefty margin)
🥃+🧀 Combination of the afternoon was the Cooper King Transatlantic and the Reypenaer Dutch Gouda by just one vote, with scoring split across all combos except a single vote for the 5th pairing.
Jordan and the Love Cheese team were amazing as always, with our whisky knowledge 🥃 matched with their encyclopaedic cheese knowledge 🧀.
If you fancy getting any of these delicious cheeses, visit them online www.lovecheese.co.uk or visit their shop on Gillygate and even grab a moment in their secret garden under the York walls like we did!
📷 Bottle lineup photo courtesy of club member Kate @millhilldramary of our favourites from that part of the world!
A bit more about the whiskies and cheese…
#1 Waterford The Cuvée (50%, £70) served with Langres
Our first whisky for Love Whisky? Love Cheese? III was The Cuvée (50%, £70) from Irish distillery Waterford which sadly went into administration in January 2025.
This distillery, established by Mark Reynier, owner of Renegade rum in Grenada and the man behind the revival of Islay’s Bruichladdich distillery, started distilling from an old Guinness brewery in the city of Waterford in the Republic of Ireland in 2015 with its first releases in 2020.
As with his other projects, the whiskies were terroir-led, focusing on the influence of barley in the final spirit.
Love Cheese served Langres, a French cheese from the plateau of Langres in the region of Champagne-Ardenne, to go with this – the cheese at 0-10minutes on the plate (between the knife and orange Gouda).
Some love for dram and cheese with positive feedback about a complimentary pairing where the combined taste established a great start for this #whisky and #cheese tasting.
Words about the whisky (from The Whisky Exchange):
“With this landmark release, the Waterford team have drawn on their mature stocks of single origin whisky and married them together, balancing the flavours derived from different terroirs to create depth and balance. The result is a characterful dram, oily in texture and slightly spicy with gingerbread and clove alongside fresh apple, marmalade and toasted grains.”
Words about the cheese (from Love Cheese):
“Unparalleled in richness, smooth and supple texture.”
“This is another smelly French cheese to delve into and tickle the taste buds! This cheese is milder than the renowned Epoisses but it is still salty and strong on the nose. Each bite leaves a melt-in-the-mouth feeling offering complex fruity flavours for you to indulge in.”
#2 Cooper King Transatlantic (48%, £85) served with aged Reypenaer Dutch Gouda
With our whisky/food pairing tastings, we try to have a split of complimentary pairings and ones where tastes contrast.
Taking the latter, our 2nd combination pitted Cooper King Transatlantic: Cocoa + Vanilla, a whisky where “premium Bordeaux wine casks bring notes of toasted oak, cocoa and stewed fruit” against Reypenaer Dutch Gouda, a mature (orange) cheese with a hard texture and crystalline crunch.
Could the caramel and coffee notes 🧀 battle the 🥃 for taste supremacy?
Ultimately in the single category voting, the Dutch won, but in the voting for pairing of the night, the 🥃+🧀 pipped the others in a beautiful marriage of Yorkshire whisky aged in Kentucky bourbon casks and Gouda aged in cool cellars in the Netherlands.
#3 SPEY Spirit of Speyside Festival Whisky (2022) (£88.30 / 58.3%) served with venison salami
Our 3rd whisky was SPEY, technically a lost distillery – in 2021, Glasgow Distillery purchased Tromie Mills Distillery Ltd, the company which owns the land and buildings comprising Speyside Distillery in Drumguish, Kingussie.
The current tenant and owner of the Spey whisky brand, Speyside Distillers, announced plans to build its own distillery then continued to operate from the Drumguish site until their lease expired this year. They retain ownership of the SPEY brand, but are moving to a newly acquired highland estate at Strathmashie by Laggan, and will use a new brand name.
The term “lost distillery” is usually reserved for sites that closed due to economic collapse, war, or industrial misfortune. However, in this case the stills don’t come with the building lease and are moving – so all the whisky (including this one) produced up to 2025 will be classed as whisky-distillate from a lost distillery after this year. And fortunately for fans of the whisky maker, the company will continue and expand in its new location.
We sent club member Steve to grab this bottle from the 2022 Spirit of Speyside festival. There’s a lovely symmetry as in our first ever tasting also hosted by Love Cheese, a cask strength SPEY was dram of the night.
This bottle is from a single Olorosso cask, and took joint honours for our 🥃 whisky of the afternoon.
Because we are tasting provocateurs, the pairing was with venison salami not cheese!
#4 The One Manzanilla (46.6% / £38) served with Comté
Here at York Whisky Club, hosts Jasper and Jim have reserved part of their memories for 🥃 whisky, excluding more useful details about work and putting the right bins out.
So when Hemil key account manager and brand ambassador at The Lakes presented The One Manzanilla Cask Finished Whisky (£38, 46.6%) at one of our tastings in 2024, both made a mental note it would work well alongside 🧀 and vowed to get hold of a bottle and store it for our next collaboration with Love Cheese.
From The Lakes Distillery :-
“Exclusively from the Andalusian town of Sanlucar de Barrameda, the cooler coastal climate of the region gives Manzanilla distinctive dry saline characteristics.”
“Our singular blend of The Lakes Single Malt and select grain and malt Scotch whiskies from the Highlands, Speyside and Islay is then finished in the finest Manzanilla casks to create this refreshing expression of The One.”
“Plum jam, boiled sweets and aromatic woodsmoke on the nose with a touch of salinity leads to a palate of lightly stewed apples, candied ginger and a hint of lemon zest, with an uplifting, fresh and balanced finish.”
Love Cheese had just the right alpine cheese to suit this (35mins on the plate):
“Aged 18 months with a seriously nutty and earthy flavour, stemming from the rich mountain pastures of the Franche-Comte region.”
“This hard mountain cheese is matured to perfection in the silence and darkness of special caves, which is where the cheese gets its unique taste, texture and colour. It is dense, open and smooth – basically everything you want in a hard cheese, coming with beautiful fruity, nutty, salty, savoury, smokey and sweet flavours.”
“The aftertaste is slightly more bitter, insanely moreish and really well rounded.”
Our winning 🧀 + 🥃 pairing was only by one point and this pair joined the hefty ranks of the #2 set.
#5 Ardnahoe 5yo Inaugural Release (50% / £70) served with Montgomery Cheddar.
How do you carve out a unique flavour profile as an Islay Whisky with all the established giants around you?
Well, somehow with their 5yr inaugural release, Ardnahoe have done just that. This took joint 🥃 whisky of the afternoon with the following tasting notes:
Nose: Bonfires, smoked meat, bacon, toffee, and baked apple. A little water brings out lemon zest.
Palate: Peppery, orange citrus, smoky but overpoweringly balanced by a toffee sweetness.
Finish: Clean and refreshing, with a sea breeze quality.
Whilst there was some individual love for the paired cheese – 🧀 Montgomery Cheddar – only one attendee voted this the pairing of the night.
Thanks to the brilliant knowledge of Jordan and his team, we now know that ‘Cheddar’ can be made with any milk as it describes the production process, not the end result – perhaps we will see if anyone makes Islay Goats Cheddar for our next Islay whisky + cheese pairing!
#6 Mackmyra Stjarnrok (46.1% / £65) served with Cashel Blue
Our final pairing was a Mackmyra Stjärnrök (Star Smoke) served with Cashel Blue, an artisanal blue cheese from Tipperary, Ireland.
Alike our first distillery, Mackmyra has had a challenging time of late and went into administration in 2024, before being rescued by a previous investor. One attendee has a cask there and it was great to hear that bottling operations are in motion again.
Stjärnrök is based on Mackmyra’s “smoky” recipe spirit.
“Not content with just your traditional peat smoke, part of this recipe includes spirit made from malted barley which has been dried using burnt juniper! This smoky spirit has then been aged across a combination of cask types, with the main focus in this expression being Oloroso Sherry, with support from spirit aged in ex-bourbon barrels and some in casks that have previously housed cloudberry wine.”
Good showing for the Cashel Blue (“Tastes farmy” was one response) and the combination.
This prompted some debate about a Cashel Blue / Campbeltown tasting in the future for a meeting of 🧀 + 🥃 funk!
A few social drams after in the @lovecheeseyork Secret Garden and it was time to depart having clocked a successful trilogy of 🥃+🧀 tastings!
