Hot Chocolate: A Summer Visit with Unique Flavours at Radlík Distillery

From some of Czechia’s most historic distilling sites to one of its newest. Radlík is only 40 minutes outside Prague, and it's a lovely journey on a late August day. Before hosting a tasting at the Whiskeria in the evening, I got to sample some of Czechia’s great public transport. A fast metro to Budějovická, where city buses fire you right out into the countryside. 

I needed a little recovery time after my two-distillery day seeing R. Jelinek and TOSH, but now I was ready to see something different. Kamil Kutina, Radlík’s master distiller, has more than twenty years’ experience here. The distillery was founded back in 1998. It certainly wasn’t making whisky back then. An old still in the distillery’s entryway (with a fun fish vane thing spinning in time with the stirrers) dates back to this time. An old grain silo on the side of the building shows off the remnants of an old grain elevator. 

This isn’t a microdistillery, but Radlík is still a tight-knit crew of only six people. Jiří, Jirka, and Jakub also help to show me around. ‘Playfulness’, they tell me, is the watchword at this distillery.

Fruit distilling is still the big moneymaker here - no surprise for a Czech distillery! Radlík processes 500,000 kilos of fruit per year! With 20,000 litres of fermenting fruit mash at any one time, Radlík outputs a total 40,000LPA of fruit brandies. Their own brandy brands (try saying that five times fast) are quite competitive, being voted best in the country three times in a row. 

However, this total also includes small batches, made using fruit brought in by locals. This is a longstanding tradition in Czechia, comparable to how rakiya stills often operate in Bulgaria (or the now-extinct mobile stills of France). Up to a certain (generous) amount, locals can bring their own fruit crop to be distilled at a reduced rate of alcohol tax. 

Radlík underwent a significant expansion in 2020, adding a second distilling space. With that 2020 expansion, whisky was added to the mix at Radlík. The original coal and wood fired setup was upgraded to steam coils. The first pot still (400L) has a funnel shaped top inspired by Holstein stills, while the second (250L) has a three-plate column. This is left open for runs of whisky, so Radlík whisky is straight double distilled (at present). The style of these Czech-made stills reminds me of Ger Arts’ model used in Mworveld: both come from Kovodel.

DETAILS

• München malt (unpeated) / Czech malt (peated)
• Chocolate malt sourced internationally (Belgium?)
• Temperature controlled 5 day(ish) fermentation
• Whisky yeast
• 2 steam-heated Kovodel pot stills (400L / 250L)
• 3% angels share

TASTING

All Radlík’s aging casks of spirit sit up in the roof, with plenty of space to fit more in future. It’s certainly warm in late August, but Kamil shows how he can control the temperature and humidity up here with a series of cool water misters.

My first sample is 45% ABV, and aged in bourbon. The texture is smooth, the taste is a little vegetal but in a very nice way: it just makes the overall effect less sweet than you might expect. Kamil tells me this is an early version of what will become 5 and 8 year old single malt expressions, though as a small producer, Radlík will mostly focus on 3 and 5 year bottlings to get product out there sooner.

Next, a three year old lightly peated sample, drawn from a PX cask. It has what I can only describe as menthol and plum notes blended with the peat. That same vegetal note is present, balanced with a mild PX aroma and smooth texture.

We move on to Radlík’s real signature, a unique twist in Czech whisky and (arguably) the wider whisky world. 45% of production here uses chocolate malt (darkly roasted malt, in case you were getting your hopes up about actual cocoa being involved). Kamil and the other distillers had to create a staged fermentation process in order to get this low-sugar malt to produce alcohol, and even then, it is necessarily low-yield.

The sample of 50/50 chocolate and munich malt handed to me smells like a forest floor… dark chocolate with an underlying bourbon cask sweetness. It smells better the more you let it breathe. Returning after a moment, a lot of fresh coffee bean aroma pours out of the glass (not brewed coffee - there’s a difference). 

Kamil then hands me a cask sample of 17 month aged chocolate malt on new US oak (64% ABV). It’s astringent, but the chocolate and coffee notes are even better! There’s a spicy attack at the sides of the mouth, but not in the throat. While I enjoyed the first sample, this one REALLY shows the potential of this unique malt style. Those vegetal notes are there, but now reinforced with strong support from that powerful new oak.

Next, a lightly peated dram aged three years in bourbon before a year’s finish in second fill port. The (now characteristic) vegetal notes are again well supported, but it doesn’t have much port flavour. Just fits well into the consistent distillery profile emerging to me over the course of this tasting. Kamil explains how he wants Radlík whiskies to overlap with certain flavour elements of peated Scotch whisky, without solely imitating it. Picture a venn diagram - the style isn’t 100% Czech per se, but it straddles the line. 

Kamil is frank about how much experimentation it took to get here, and how that process is still ongoing to some degree - they are still working on the best ways to mill chocolate malt, for example. He then hands me a 50ppm sample from an ex-Muscat cask, aged only five months. ‘A burning hospital’, he says. The nose is grainy, and naturally it still has some new-make smell to it, but the mouthfeel is surprisingly moderate. 

There are solid Port Charlotte notes coming through here, alongside - say it with me now - a well-integrated vegetal element. This spirit was produced using Czech peat, and it benefits well both from the smooth texture Radlík whiskies all seem to possess and the more restrained, woody style of Czech peat (lacking the sulphury iodine of Islay). Kamil has some ambitions to try and do his own peating at the distillery here, but that’s a story for a future time…

The roof space also holds a row of Czech oak casks from the well-regarded Barina cooperage. All are filled with unpeated pilsen malt spirit, just hitting the three year age mark. Kamil has around 30 casks aging in total, showing how new and small-scale whisky production remains here.

Tasting one sample blind, I thought it was around eight years old until it was revealed to me as only 1 year old, aged in first fill dessert wine. I don’t have any more notes on this one, sadly, but I hope it was a sign of things to come!