Naguelann ‘Dieil Tantad’ Single Malt Whisky de Bretagne
Naguelann ‘Dieil Tantad’ Single Malt Whisky de Bretagne
Embodying the very spirit of the historic Celtic nation of Brittany in northwest France, Naguelann is the vision of master distiller and blender Lénaïck Lemaitre. The maritime Bretagne peninsula has long been distinct from the rest of France, and the Naguelann whiskies (the name a playful tribute to Lénaïck’s hometown of Languenan) build a bridge across the channel to the shared culture of Scotland. Lénaïck is driven by the terroir of Brittany—the unique history and artistry of the place and its people. He digs deep into its Celtic roots, applying Scotch techniques with absolute precision, delivering something as personal as a fingerprint—an honest representation of the Breton spirit.
Lénaïck came into the whisky trade first as a bartender, developing a passion for malt whisky upon a tour of Scotch distilleries. Later, through his bottle shop in the historic fortress town of Saint-Malo, he began purchasing, blending, and aging whiskies, honing his skills and palate. Eventually, his reputation earned him attention from local distillers looking to collaborate with a skilled partner in order to develop the story of Breton whisky. Before long, he was purchasing a small pot still and building a tiny distillery in his former neighbor’s old stone home. Success led to expansion, necessitating the removal of planks from the ceiling to accommodate new equipment, creating a tightly-packed, quaint whisky workshop, without more than a few feet in any direction for the nimble Lénaïck to shuffle between components.
Dour, Koad, Gedal—Breton for ‘Water, Wood, Time’— is the elemental maxim that defines Lénaïck’s approach. Each whisky is distilled with a specific vision, going directly into their intended wooden cask for their entire term. “I only have recipes,” Lénaïck explains. “It’s not cask finishing, it’s cask starting.” This technique takes an incredible amount of courage—Lénaïck forges his own path by deciding the direction of each whisky at inception, and carefully guiding its individual path through his cellar. Once aged, blended, and rested, every Naguelann whisky is minimally filtered by gravity, then downproofed with Bretagne natural mineral water before bottling.
Naguelann’s single-malt Dieil trilogy of whiskies is each aged three-to-six years (dictated by continuous tasting to gauge the specific barrel’s impact) in a different types of barrel where the varied wood influence presents like decisively applied splashes of color on a canvas of ocean-tinged, peated whisky. Dieil Tantad (‘burnt’ in Breton) is defined by its sequence of vessels—first aging in fresh St-Émilion Bordeaux casks, followed by ex-Islay whisky casks, then taken to term in alligator-charred French oak barrels. Lénaïck arrived at this layering of flavors through methodical trials, settling on an order that offers a remarkably clear transmission of the contributions of each cask. Like its Dieil siblings, Tantad’s base whisky is composed of 100% locally-grown and -malted Bretagne barley, and is peated to a moderate 35ppm.
Flavor Profile: Shows a dynamic blend of red and tropical fruits, nuts, spice and smoke. Coconut, roasted chestnuts, and banoffee pie up front, with charred marshmallow, toasted black sesame, baking spices, and graham crackers on the back end. The sturdy proof offers a clean and decisive finish to this cavalcade of flavor.