April 2025

Wire Works Whisky Special Waters is an experimental release inspired by the practice known as ‘petites eaux’ (literal translation: ‘small waters’) sometimes carried out in the production of Cognac and Armagnac. The process involves ageing low strength spirit in wood, for subsequent use as ‘proofing water’ on the higher strength equivalent i.e. to dilute to final bottling strength. The low alcohol waters extract flavours from the oak cask that aren’t accessible with higher strength alcohol.

“We’ve used the petites eaux as part of a vatting to build in the nuances of flavour and aroma from accessing the range of flavours available in the cask.“ Max Vaughan (Founder)

Why Petites Eaux?

Our mindset has always been around identifying all the strands of whisky-making where we can impart flavour both before cask (e.g. spent yeast, local barley, distillery design and whisky-making process), and subsequently during maturation (e.g. oak types, cask fill strength ABV, warehouse location). All whilst preserving our house style and flavour during vatting.

Wire Works Special Waters story began back in 2021 before we’d released our first single malt. The team had some discussion around the practice of using petites eaux in Cognac and thought it would be interesting to trial some similar concepts in whisky-making to understand the effects on flavour, aroma and texture.

We’ve been casking at varying ABVs since we started out to better understand oak extraction and the interaction with our Wire Works spirit, and the petites eaux trial is an extension of this area of focus. We’ve now filled a number of different casks in our warehouse with low strength spirit, to allow us to develop a program for, and greater understanding of, petites eaux.

For this release, the ‘special water’ was matured in two American oak cask types: a refill STR and an ex-bourbon barrel.

If we hadn’t used petites eaux how would the whisky differ?

Wire Works whisky is known for having good viscosity and mouth feel, but the petites eaux dials this up. :

“The standout additional flavours it provides for me are huge chocolate and coconut notes. In addition, the one thing I noticed at the Birmingham Whisky Festival is that at room temperature, and at 57.3%, the whisky was slightly hazy when the sun hit it, proving we have added more fatty acids to the liquid. The fatty acids have the ability to carry flavour in the final spirit, and also provide great oily texture.”  Tom’s view (WPD Whisky Ambassador)

‘Proper whisky, that!’ was how one festival attendee described it.

The fact we never chill filter means these differences can be identified (chill filtering is used to cut out the potential for haze, but also removes important elements of flavour and texture).