Dear followers and participants of our tasting panel
Last winter we sent you a letter. We announced 'a new beginning' for Thy Whiskey and set up a tasting panel to help us on our way.
After filling casks for almost 14 years, we have decided that 2024 will be the time for something new. A new way of bottling our whisky - but we want you to be part of the journey towards our new whisky. That is why we established a taste panel. In just 3 weeks, we received more than 700 applications. Among the applicants, we selected two times 50 participants, who together with us were to evaluate our previous bottlings – a Danish team and an international team. The question was simple: What had worked best in our previous bottlings and what should we work on more in the future.
These were very constructive conversations. We had many of our thoughts about the future confirmed but we also learned several things we hadn't thought of before.
We are an experimental distillery, driven by passion and curiosity.
One of the most important messages we got out of the two tasting sessions was about recognizability. Most people think that it is great that our bottlings so far have been so different - It is great to experience new perspectives on how a whiskey can taste - that it makes it exciting to follow along. And we agree. The hand-picked single casks, small experimental bottlings, variations in grain types, cask types and smoke, etc., must still be a fixed component of whisky here from Thy. That is clear.
But at the same time, most also called for the possibility that the repetition can be supplemented. As one of the participants said, "I'm looking forward to be going to my wine merchant, buying a bottle of ‘Thy’. One bottle of single malt, which can be the essence of the distillery – a bottle which you can offer to guests, and which new whisky drinkers can try, knowing that this is a 'Thy'".
And it's true. When you visit your regular whisky dealer and look at the whisky shelf, there are always many recognizable bottles. Many know what a 16-year-old Lagavulin or a 12-year-old Highland Park tastes like. Well-known bottles which are good places to start your whisky journey. It is more difficult with our bottles, which are so experimental and different.
So, we have been taking up the challenge. How does a ‘Thy’ taste if we can only choose one bottle?
That is no easy task. Our approach to whisky is driven by our own curiosity and passion. Our warehouse is so broadly composed that it could almost cover ten different distillery styles. Last year we made 9 different distillates, which came in 5 different types of casks in 4 different sizes.
Still, there are some trends that. Our 'Bøg' new make with the smouldering mouthfullness of beechwood smoke, our non-smoked 'Pale' new make with its grainy and malty base. The sherry casks, especially the oloroso sherry casks, and the good bourbon barrels from Heaven Hill in Kentucky, make up the majority of the barrels in our warehouse.
In recent months, we have taken hundreds of cask samples and tasted back and forth. We have made four different offers - with different cask compositions and different intensities of smoke. All are based on our Bøg and Pale new makes and in mixtures of bourbon barrels, oloroso sherry casks and PX sherry casks.
So now it is up to our tasting panel to help us gain knowledge on the future flavour of Thy.
We hope that you will again want to help us take the next step on our journey!
Best regards from the whole family at Gyrup
Ellen and Andres, Marie and Jakob
