Millstone (Zuidam distillery) is paying a lot of attention to its sherry casks and they’ve also got hold of a couple of special things. One of them is this Pajarete Cask in which they matured a Millstone 2018 whisky.
Pajarete or Paxarete (just one ‘t’ although it’s often misspelled paxarette) is a mythical name in the whisky world. It is a fortified wine similar to sherry, but historically made in specific vineyards near Villamartín. They used Pedro Ximénez, Moscatel and Listán Negro grapes, to which arrope or sancocho was added: grape juice cooked down until it becomes a syrup. It’s similar to what is called vino de color in Jerez. If you speak Spanish, then here’s a short study.
Pajerete, the key to old-style Macallan?
The Scots used this “über-PX” to give tired sherry casks a quick-and-dirty seasoning, because it rapidly added a blast of flavour. Some whisky enthousiasts think that what we tend to call old-style sherry, reminiscent to some legendary Macallans or other heavily sherried malts from the 1950s and 1960s, comes from these Pajarete casks. They claim it was banned by the SWA in the 1980s (quoting Gavin D. Smith’s Whisky: a book of words) because it was considered to be an illegal additive. Personally I’m not convinced of this story. After all Pip Hills wrote that Pajarete wasn’t banned but simply abandoned because the results were not satisfactory. After all the original vineyards
I contacted Patrick Van Zuidam and he confirmed they used a modern cask. Nowadays two (or maybe a few more) producers in the D.O. Malaga are making wines in the Pajarete style again. However the production methods have changed: adding the typical syrup isn’t allowed any more, so although the name remains, it’s hard to say how truthful they are to the original. I don’t expect this whisky to replicate the true old-style sherry profile.
Fun fact: an authentic cask of Pajarete, with wine of over 80 years old, was bottled in 2020 by the wonderful M. Ant. De La Riva. It came from the sherry bodega García Monge which was wound up in the late 1970s.
Millstone 7 yo 2018 – Pajarete Cask (46%, OB 2025, 687 btl.)
Nose: fairly sour and musty. The sourness is a clear winey note (usually from young wines), with some astringent apple, rhubarb jam and unripe grape. Underneath there is a mild leathery hint, some pink peppercorns, sultanas and clove-studded orange. Hints of nuts and spent coffee filters as well.
Mouth: now the sweetness of the wine comes forward, with caramelly notes, walnuts and toffee. It lacks some body, and mid-palate it gets overtaken by mildly bitter herbs, more cider apples and cold brew coffee. Then back to clove, wormwood and Seville orange.
Finish: medium, still bittersweet, like burnt sugar with herbal tea and leather.
It’s funny how there is a certain syrupy side to this Millstone, yet at the same time it lacks some body and it gets dragged down by some sour and bitter notes. A nice experiment on its own, but not of much help when trying to unravel the myths of the historic Pajarete.