EXPERIENCE N.13 // CATALYST
EXPERIENCE N.13 // CATALYST
We are a company founded by five individuals brought together by a shared love of whisky, and stories and experiences that intertwined over the course of a two decades.
But when we reflected back on the journey that led us to taking the necessary steps that led us to the moment we started Woven, there are a few moments that stuck out; these magical moments of chemistry that changed our lives in such a positive way. They're deeply personal and would seem mundane to most people, but we think these moments are something that everyone can relate to at one level. They feel different from the everyday - sometimes they are moments or periods of life that last a longer time.
Periods of change, or chance encounters - varied though they are we felt they have a certain quality or energy to them that we wanted to try and represent in liquid form.
It was easy to make the jump for us because time and time again we encounter whisky samples that do the same thing. They change the things they encounter, transform them, add life to them. Whilst we realise the definition does not strictly apply to what we’re talking about - we describe these whiskies in the studio as catalysts. They cause reactions, they bring change. They’re an incredibly useful part of a blenders inventory, and until now we’ve used them sparingly in a handful of our blends.
Indeed, the catalyst for the idea of this blend was a discussion about natural wine. How the flavour profiles contained within some of the wines of this variety we were encountering tasted alive, somewhat unfinished - like a reaction was still occurring within the glass. That brought a certain excitement to the experience that were curious to know if we could emulate within a whisky. Like a sour beer, a wild cheese or indeed, any sort of living experiment. Pete set about cataloguing the ‘catalyst’ whiskies that we had and seeing what happened if we started blending them together. Like a mad scientist in the studio Pete was on a trippy journey of discovery - his palate being sent this way and that by the reactions of what were individually, some of the most freakish and dynamic whisky samples we had.
You can read about the components that make up the blend here, but we’re especially proud of this whisky as we believe it to be like nothing else available within the category of blended Scotch Whisky, and whilst we admit that it might not be for everyone; we do believe it goes some way to showing how exciting and dynamic the category can be if you let creativity run wild and pursue flavour profiles that aren’t always ‘reliable, consistent and safe’. Otherwise we’d all be driving Volvo estates (disclaimer - we LOVE Volvo estates, it’s part of our emerging collective mid life crisis identifies.)