There's a quiet revolution happening in Irish whiskey, and it's being led by outfits you won't find on the tourist trail. Two Stacks — a blend house rather than a distillery, though they'd bristle at the simplification — have built a reputation on bold cask finishes and a refusal to play it safe. Their Fruit Drops expression, finished in apple brandy casks, is exactly the kind of bottle that makes me pay attention: a NAS Irish whiskey bottled at a punchy 50% ABV, with a finish that could go gloriously right or horribly wrong.
I'll say upfront: it goes right. Very right.
The apple brandy cask finish is the headline here, and Two Stacks have handled it with a confident hand. This isn't one of those novelty finishes where the secondary cask steamrolls everything underneath. At 50% ABV, there's enough backbone in the base spirit to hold its own. You get the sense of a whiskey that was blended with this particular finish in mind — not an afterthought, but the plan from the start. The higher proof means nothing gets lost; every note arrives with conviction.
What strikes me most about Fruit Drops is how well it balances the orchard character of the apple brandy cask with the grain-forward, slightly honeyed profile you'd expect from a quality Irish blend. It sits in that sweet spot where the finish adds a genuine new dimension without erasing the whiskey's identity. At £37.50, the value proposition is frankly absurd. You'd pay twice this for a comparable cask-finished bottle from Scotland, and three times it if the marketing department had got involved.
Tasting Notes
I'll hold off on breaking this down into nose, palate, and finish in the usual fashion — I want you to discover those layers yourself. What I will say is that the apple brandy influence is present throughout, weaving in and out of the spirit rather than dominating it. Expect orchard fruit, certainly, but also a warmth and spice that the 50% ABV delivers without any burn. This is a whiskey that rewards patience. Give it ten minutes in the glass and it opens up considerably.
The Verdict
Two Stacks have delivered something genuinely interesting here. Fruit Drops is playful without being gimmicky, bold without being aggressive, and fruity without tipping into sweetness. It's the kind of bottle that converts people — hand it to someone who thinks Irish whiskey means Jameson and nothing else, and watch their face change. At £37.50 and 50% ABV, it over-delivers on both flavour and value. A confident 7.5 out of 10, and a bottle I'd happily buy again. My only reservation is that, as a NAS release from a blend house, there's a degree of mystery about what's actually in the bottle. But when the liquid is this good, I find I care less about the spec sheet and more about what's in my glass.
Best Served
Pour this neat in a Glencairn and let it breathe for a few minutes — the apple brandy character blooms beautifully with air. If it's a warm evening, add a single ice cube and drink it on the back step with something sweet nearby — a slice of apple tart, if you're feeling on the nose about it. This also makes a killer Old Fashioned: the orchard fruit plays brilliantly against a good demerara syrup and a dash of Angostura. Don't drown it in a mixer. It deserves better than that.
