Review: Cedar Ridge The QuintEssential Special Release – The Untitled Cigar Malt Project

Iowa’s Cedar Ridge Distillery has hit with its third limited-edition single malt: The QuintEssential: The Untitled Cigar Malt Project. And it’s a complicated one, with five different cask types involved (as near as we can understand the details in the press release):

According to master blender Murphy Quint, “The vision for this release was a whiskey evoking the rich experience of a cigar. It features bold notes of tobacco, a subtle hint of smoke, a balanced character and a lengthy finish.” The release is a blend of single malts first aged in Cedar Ridge ex-bourbon barrels and finished in the following casks: first-fill Amontillado sherry; Cedar Ridge Wine, a Madeira-inspired wine made at Cedar Ridge; new French oak; new American oak with char #3; and peated malt finished in a ruby Port cask.

“While each cask plays an important role in the blend, the peated malt delivers an important feature. Its smoky influence, though subtle due to being blended with non-peated single malts, lingers long on the finish, a transition that emerges after the initial notes of sherry and Madeira have faded. This was a key element to the project, achieving a finish that lingers pleasantly, much like the subtle hint of smoke you might experience long after savoring a cigar. This is a whiskey I’ve envisioned for a long time, and I thoroughly enjoyed putting it together,” added Quint.

This immediately surprised me: It’s a big, bruising whiskey unlike Cedar Ridge’s other experiences, and you can chalk a lot of that up to two elements in the finishing: peat and Madeira. The Madeira-inspired wine mentioned above is immediately redolent on the nose, providing a sharp, slightly vinegary quality to the aroma. An oxidized nuttiness rings that — driven by Amontillado sherry — and then a healthy layer of peat smoke, though not an overwhelming one. Any semblance of what the underlying malt whiskey is like is wholly indiscernible on the nose.

The palate keeps all of this rolling, though here the peat takes center stage. Earthy and ashy, with a mushroom bent to it, this doesn’t so much resemble Islay Scotch as it does the wet ashes of a woodsy campfire after a rainstorm. The one-two punch of sherry and Madeira come next, giving the palate a heavily oxidized quality that’s loaded with notes of roasted chestnuts, black pepper, and roasted pumpkin. Do these work well together? Sort of, maybe, in a haphazard way — but if the idea was to evoke a cigar lounge after a decadent meal, the whiskey has a long way to go to get there. It’s also a very hot whiskey at 54.45% abv, and even a healthy amount of water didn’t do much to temper the heat — or the aggressive flavors of old wine and ashy embers. The finish is very drying but otherwise something of a mishmash of all that’s come before it.

Cedar Ridge has put out some winning malts of late, but this expression tries to bite off way more than it can chew, creating a scattered product that is just much too busy and lacking focus. Smoke and fortified wine? That’s a combination that’s proven winning before, especially on Islay, but this expression is simply missing the magic.

114.9 proof.

C+ / $100 / cedarridgedistillery.com

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