Origin: Trentino Alto Adige (Italy)
Type: Italian Malt Whisky
Strength: 50%ABV
Ageing casks: Ex-Sherry
Chillfiltered: No
Added coloring: No
Owner: Puni (Ebensperger family)
Average price: € 75.00
Official website: www.puni.com
Vote: 84/100
Not many new Puni bottlings reach the shelves. For some time now, the distillery has dedicated itself to curating the two special editions, Aura and Arte, which on a (more or less) annual basis nevertheless represent the great possibilities that the Ebensperger family’s whisky knows how to express.
Here is the third incarnation of Arte, released this summer and marking a record for Puni: it’s in fact the first distillate from only malted barley to leave the stills, in what can legitimately be called their first single malt.
Matured for almost five years in ex-Sherry casks, with a higher alcohol content than its two predecessors, it produced 1655 bottles.
Tasting notes
And it’s precisely the sherry that shows its muscles, with all its vinous acidity that scatters buckets of red fruits and lemon between the nostrils, paving the way for an unexpected pistachio cream that crosses over with chocolate coffee, trifle, cereal bar and dried apricots. Acidity and softness alternate with each approach to the glass, shouldering each other like old girlfriends who pick up at country fairs, leaving a trail of nutmeg and malt as they pass. It definitely has its charms.
On the palate, pepper and a touch of ginger sparkle on a compact texture of red fruits and pink grapefruit, over which appear nervous brushstrokes of sacher torte, aniseed, coffee, wood and nutmeg. Along the length, a clear vegetal vein appears, with evocations of green tea and fennel, and an impression of malt biscuit timidly emerging between the folds of flavours. With the addition of water, the harshness is smoothed out and chocolate and coffee return with more conviction, finding more balance between the flavours.
Quite long finish of red fruits, spices, coffee, wood.
Whisky that is perhaps still too young and easily loses its balance also due to a not very centred alcohol content, in one of those (rare) cases in which I found that the addition of water helped the tasting. However, the path appears to be the right one, the elements for an incisive dram are there and they just need time, one of the indispensable elements of whisky… and of art.