Israel’s First Single Malt Ready To Go

By Richard Thomas

Israel’s first whisky distillery, Milk & Honey, is poised to release their first batch of single malt whisky, which would also be the first Israeli single malt ever. The distillery announced on May 20 that they had bottled the first cask from their experimental series, which yielded 391 bottles. Those bottles are slated for sale later in June.

Milk & Honey opened in 2014, and the cask in question was distilled in January of that year under the supervision of Dr. Jim Swan, the legendary whisky industry consultant who passed away this past February. The new make was put into a 225 liter new American oak cask (not quite big enough for a hogshead, but larger than an ASB) and aged for 31 months, before receiving a seven month finish in an ex-bourbon barrel.

If you know your cask volumes, implicit in that statement is that either 25 gallons of whisky evaporated in less than three years or else at least some of whatever the difference in volume between the two casks was held aside.

Bottles #1 to #100 will be sold at an online auction.