By Whiskymaker's Reserve No. 6 — released in 2022 — The Lakes Distillery had settled into a confident rhythm. Dhavall Gandhi's Reserve series was no longer a set of individual statements but a continuing conversation with sherry, red wine and bourbon casks, each release exploring a slightly different shade of the same Cumbrian spirit.
No. 6 arrives at 52% ABV and leans, as the house style dictates, on European oak sherry casks — Oloroso and PX driving the colour and much of the aroma — with supporting casks bringing lift and structure. It is a richly upholstered whisky, the kind that seems to sink into the glass and the evening alike.
The nose is immediately generous: black cherry compote, bitter orange, dark honey, worn leather, a trail of pipe tobacco drifting somewhere behind. The palate is oily and unhurried — sticky toffee pudding (fittingly, for a Cumbrian malt), dried cranberry, clove-studded orange, mocha — and the oak arrives late enough to feel like punctuation rather than interruption.
The finish is long and warming, fading on dark chocolate, dried fruit and a faint hazelnut note. Drinkers who loved the sherried character of No. 1 will find themselves at home here; those who followed the wine-cask brightness of No. 2 may feel No. 6 is more nocturnal. Either way, it is further proof that English single malt, when treated with this much patience, can hold its own against anything.
What strikes me most about the Reserve series by this point is how distinctly Cumbrian it has become. The oily, slightly waxy Bassenthwaite spirit has a way of holding sherry influence without being smothered by it, and No. 6 is perhaps the clearest demonstration so far that the house style is not borrowed from Speyside or Jerez but built in the Lakes themselves, on Lakeland water and Lakeland patience.
