Goodradigbee Ironbark Red

Nose: Alcohol with woody notes. Trace aromas of apple, cinnamon and something sweet (maybe honey?) but it’s incredibly ethereal. Palate: Sharp but neutral arrival of alcohol and tannin, or some other wood-derived chemical. It’s undemonstrative and unremarkable. Finish: Short. A bit of tannin. I had not heard about this until yesterday when I saw it at a pop-up stall at our local liquor shop. It was the third Goodradigbee product I tasted and the best thing I can say is that it was not as bad as their awful Ironbark Yellow. It has a raw alcohol character and is obviously very young, thin and characterless with no sign of the complexity or integration you get from proper maturation. Goodradigbee Distillers are not using oak casks to age their spirit for the required 2 years so it can be called whisky. Instead they are using Australian hardwood boxes and maturing for just a few months. They claim this “innovative” system provides more surface area for maturation. However putting spirit into a small box to age for a few months clearly achieves very little so I think it’s more likely that they are just avoiding the expense of buying oak casks and the cost of cooperage. This isn’t a fast maturation system like pressure-treatment with oak blocks or chips which can achieve some semblance of maturation (if you’re lucky). It’s just a failed experiment. There is no way I could recommend this stuff. It retails for AUD$88 and you would have to be certifiably deranged to choose this over anything else in the same price bracket. “Poor” : 63/100 (1.25 stars)