Glenfarclas 1966 Fino Casks 47 Year Old

This stunning 47 year old Glenfarclas, distilled in 1966 and aged for 47 years in fino sherry casks, marks the first in a series of six different Glenfarclas special releases. Each release represents a generation of the family that have helped run Glenfarclas distillery.   Each bottle is packaged in a black box bearing a silver coin which features an image of John Grant, who founded Glenfarclas distillery six generations ago. A total of 1,444 bottles (around 300 for the UK) have been filled from three fino casks which were discovered in the Glenfarclas warehouses last year.

92 Points – whiskyfun.com

£798.00

(£665.00 ex vat)

Click here to purchase Glenfarclas 1966 Fino Casks

Glenfarclas 1954 – Single Cask #1260

Family Casks Summer 2014

Another stunning single cask from Glenfarclas distillery, released as part of the Summer 2014 Family Casks range. Distilled in 1954 and left to mature in a plain butt, cask #1260 until 2014. 480 bottles filled at cask strength, 49.6% vol.

£1560.00

(£1300.00 ex vat)

Click here to purchase Glenfarclas 1954 Single Cask 1260

Dear Society Members,

I hope things are well with you all and the Winter weather hasn’t been too harsh on you so far! We have had a lot of rain in Campbeltown recently causing the worst flooding in around 30 years but everyone has been kept safe and the whisky has not be harmed so there is no need to panic!

I’m just sending a quick newsletter today with the latest releases from Springbank Distillery. These will be the final three new releases for 2014.

We have two new bottlings due for release on Monday (17th November). Firstly we have the Springbank Green. This is a 12 year old whisky which was made with organic barley, been fully matured in bourbon casks and has been bottled at 46% ABV. There will be 9,000 bottles available for worldwide distribution. The retail price for the Springbank Green is £60.00 and unfortunately Society Members will not receive the 10% discount on this. The tasting notes for the Springbank Green are as follows:

Nose: This whisky has a real Springbank nose, earthy, peat with a salty coastal influence.

Palate: The palate is fruity; apricots and peaches are accompanied by buttery, creamy nutty shortbread. This is a lip licking whisky, oily and chewy.

Finish: The finish is long, smooth and complex with a lingering sweetness and saltiness.

In Autumn 2015, we will release another version of the Springbank Green, again made with organic barley. This time however, it will be 13 years old and 100% matured in sherry casks. More information will of course be given nearer the time of release next year.

The second new release next week is the eagerly awaited Springbank 25 year old. This has been matured in a combination of bourbon and sherry casks before being married in port casks for the final few months of maturation. It has been bottled at 46% ABV and is limited to only 1,200 bottles for worldwide distribution. The price of this is £350.00 and again, unfortunately there will be no discount offered on this. The tasting notes for the Springbank 25yo are as follows:

Nose: The nose is rich with a peated port influence. It’s redolent of the dunnage warehouse in which it was matured. Fruity too, but this time berries to the fore: blackberries, cranberries and strawberries.

Palate: The port wine influence is perfectly balanced with flavours of sherry, plum jam, blood oranges and pink grapefruit.

Finish: The finish is long, soft and elegant, with earthy, peaty and woody qualities.

We will release another batch of the Springbank 25yo in Autumn 2015 and again, more information will be given closer to the time.

As mentioned, both of these bottlings will be released this coming Monday. As well as being distributed throughout our UK and worldwide stockists, they will of course be available in our three UK Cadenhead shops as well as our European Cadenhead shops in due course.

If you would like to order the Springbank Green then let me know and I can organise this for you. The Springbank 25yo however is going to be extremely limited (to get a idea of this – only 180 bottles will remain within the UK) so if you are interested in buying this then please contact our shop directly as I will not be able to keep track of how many they have sold and I imagine it will sell out very quickly. The Campbeltown shop number is +44 (0) 1586 55 1710 (option 1).

The third and final new release which is going to be bottled in the next couple of weeks meaning it should be available start-mid December is Spirit of Freedom – “the 45” blend consisting of 45 different whiskies from across Scotland. This is being bottled following the Scottish Independence Referendum on September 18th 2014, in support of the 45% of the voting population who said “Yes”. This will retail at £25.00 per bottle and Society members will receive their discount on this meaning it will cost members £22.50. If you would like to reserve a bottle of this then please let me know as I can add you to a reserve list and contact you when it becomes available.

Anyway, that is all for the moment – please contact me if you have any questions.

Have a good weekend!

Best regards,

Mairi

Mairi Paterson

For the Springbank Society

To join the Springbank Society please contact them at society@springbankwhisky.com

www.ralfy.com gets all peaty and peatified with peatalicious Whisky Review 501 – Laphroaig 10yo @ 40%vol:

Sentebale and Royal Salute Celebrate Fourth Consecutive Year of Polo Cup Partnership in Abu Dhabi

Port Charlotte Islay Barley 2014 Release 50%

Just £49.94

The first Port Charlotte released from Islay’s Bruichladdich ever to be made with 100% Islay barley, giving this whisky an ultra provenance. The whisky is peated to 40 PPM, and bottled using Islay spring water from the Octomore field farmer James Brown.

Although heavily peated, this is an elegant and floral single malt, lighter in style and more approachable than others of the genre. This is natural whisky that has spent its entire life maturing in American and European oak casks in our salt-soaked warehouses by the shore. It is bottled at 50% abv without chill filtration or the addition of caramel food colouring, using water from a natural spring that rises on Octomore Farm above the village.

BUY NOW

Strathisla 57 Year Old – 1957 Private Collection Ultra

Bottled and released under the prestigious Private Collection Ultra label by Gordon & MacPhail is this 57 Year Old Strathisla!  Said to be the oldest Strathisla single malt whisky ever released, only 61 of these beautifully-designed decanters have been filled. Each decanter has being individually numbered, with the whisky details engraved and in-filled with silver colour. A silver-plated neck collar and stopper adorns each decanter. Wood, metal and glass are combined in a striking and innovative way to protect and display the whisky; the decanter nestles in a glass-bottomed pack, revealing a hint of the whisky colour. A book written by whisky writer Jonny McCormick is also included, telling the story of Gordon & MacPhail and the whisky itself…

Tasting Note by Jonny McCormick

Nose:
Slight nuttiness, pecan, walnut, and there’s subtle smoke twisting around too. The fruit is solid and fresh: black cherry, damson, cooking apple, and raisin.

Palatae:
Soft and ethereal at first, then a tantalising touch of bitterness, not too much, but complemented by the fruit sweetness swelling around the sides.

With water:
Cautiously, this finesses the sweetness and fruit, but does not eliminate those weightier, chocolate notes. They are boosted on the palate however, with more coffee, chocolate and black fruits apparent, and the loss of the bitterness.

Comments:
Strathisla whisky has never been more mature to offer a comparison, so this is utterly unique. Suffice to say, this magnificent, beguiling beauty offers all the dimensions and sophistication you would hope for in a greatly matured malt whisky. It is a rare and unforgettable experience.

£6250.00
(£5208.33 ex vat)

Click here to purchase Strathisla 57 Year Old – 1957

The Whisky Shop Exclusive Glenfiddich 1992

Glenfiddich, founded in 1887 by William Grant and family-run to this day, is perhaps the most famous of all of Scotland’s single malts, and is equally famous for the rarity of its single cask bottlings.

Recently, several members of The Whisky Shop team and one lucky customer, Neil Cromarty, joined Glenfiddich Malt Master, Brian Kinsman, to select a single cask Glenfiddich to be bottled exclusively for The Whisky Shop. Watch how they got on here.

The Glenfiddich Rare Collection 1992 Single Cask is now available to order exclusively from The Whisky Shop and is limited to only 200 bottles.

Glenfiddich 1992

The first release from the Glenfiddich Rare Collection. The chosen cask is a refill bourbon cask filled on 13th March 1992, yielding only 200 bottles. Bottled at 56.3% abv exclusively for The Whisky Shop.

Click here to buy

Ballechin 10yo – smoke not on the water

The past decade has seen a huge rise in the popularity of smoky whisky. This jump is one of the main reasons why we’ve seen prices for Islay whisky shoot through the roof in recent years, but fortunately, Islay isn’t the only source for a smattering of smoke.

While Scottish islands are best known for smoke (Islay in general, Talisker from Skye, Ledaig from Mull, Highland Park from Orkney), the use of peat to dry barley was once more widespread across Scotland. While that died out with the introduction of smokeless fuels many years ago, the tradition has been revived in more recent years due to more people liking the taste of smoky malt. One mainland distillery which has been producing peated whisky for longer than most is Edradour, and it’s now released something that’s virtually unique in the current crop of smoky Highlanders – a heavily peated malt with an age statement: Ballechin 10 year old.

Ballechin casks, doing that thing that casks do – sitting still and not doing very much

Ballechin is the name Edradour gives to itspeated whisky, in turn taking the name from one of the lost farm distilleries that sprung up around Pitlochry in the 1800s. Alfred Barnard visited Ballechin during his grand tour (documented in The Whisky Distilleries of the United Kingdom) and specifically noted that its malt kiln was ‘heated principally with peat’, giving some sense to the use of the distillery’s name for Edradour’s spirit. The original Ballechin closed in 1927, and the spirit now made under the same name first flowed around 2003, shortly after the current owners, indie bottler Signatory, took over.

Ballechin has released a variety of different bottlings over the years, but this is the first ongoing release with an age statement – the decade milestone. It’s heavily peated – at least 50ppm which puts it up with the smokiest whiskies on Islay (Octomore excluded, of course) – and matured in a mix of first-fill and first-refill casks, made of European and American oak, with the emphasis on the latter. It’s bottled with no colouring at 46%, and isn’t chill-filtered, all things that should keep us geeks/connoisseurs happy.

Ballechin 10yo, 46%, £45.45

Nose: Woodsmoke, lime jam and a touch of brine – if I didn’t know this was made about as far from the sea as you can get in Scotland, then I’d reckon it was from the coast. Some dark-chocolate richness sits underneath a sweet-but-sour centre, with a linseed oil and malty top coat.

Palate: Soft, rounded and sweet to start, with a pleasantly oily mouthfeel and some cinnamon spice growing over time. Chocolate limes, caramel and lemon cream make up the body, with more oak, grass and burning hay building to bonfire-like proportions.

Finish: Medium/long, with grassy peat smoke, citrus peel, dark chocolate, liquorice and lingering earthiness.

Comment: I wasn’t sure what to expect, but this definitely hits the spot. Young and fresh, but with a nice weight behind from the sherry casks in the mix. Spicy, smoky and zesty.

You can find the Ballechin 10yo and the rest of the Ballechin range over on our shiny new website.

GLENFARCLAS 1966 FINO CASK 50.5%

Speyside whisky producer Glenfarclas have introduced a 1966 fino Sherry cask expression as the first part of a new series.

A total of 1,400 bottles have been filled from four  fino casks which were discovered in the Glenfarclas warehouses last year. 300 are available to the UK market and we have 3 left of our own allocation.

“We didn’t realise we had this,” admitted George Grant, sales director at Glenfarclas. After realising that a group of casks had been seasoned with something other than the oloroso Sherry more normally used by the brand, the team consulted diaries kept by Grant’s grandfather and discovered that he had purchased some fino casks from an Edinburgh broker.

Pointing to the lighter fino character that appears on the nose in contrast to the brand’s typically richer style, Grant suggested that the familiar Glenfarclas expression then emerges on the palate, although he added: “it doesn’t have the bitter chocolate flavours.”

Each bottle is packaged in a black box bearing a silver coin which features an image of John Grant, who founded the distillery six generations ago. It marks the first in a series of six different Glenfarclas special releases, one for each generation of the family. “Another one is coming on board that is going to be totally different,” hinted Grant at the future development of this series. Although confirming that the distillery had produced fino cask-aged whiskies before, Grant noted that these had been “much younger” expressions than the new release.

“We did an experiment with different casks and realised that oloroso matched our whiskies best,” he recalled. “Most people like a fuller flavour but there are always people looking for something different.”

WHISKY TRAVELLERS FROM NORWAY

We were very happy to look after a second group arriving from Norway in two days! To be brief, here is where they visited; Glendronch distillery, a traditional harbour pub in Portsoy, Speyside cooperage, Glen Grant, Glenfiddich, Aberlour distilleries, in addition to our friend’s shop in Dufftown, where they tried on kilts! With really good evening meals, fantastic whiskies at our great pubs, more whisky in the vehicle and of course great scenery! Our driver guide took very good care of them, while Liz and Paul looked after our other Norwegians friends – the whisky curlers (that’s another story).

Here is what they sent us once home; “Hi again, yes we have now recovered from a great and interesting trip, with a lot of new experience, and a very good tour leader/driver! The trip was fantastic, and enjoying, with a good variety of happenings. As this was our first time in the highlands, we think the program in general was good. And we did suggest a couple of things we would like to do, outside of program, and this was no problem. Thank you very much for the present you arranged for Frode, very surprising for him, and he thought this was a great thing! We will have no problems recommending you for others, and when we come back, we will get in touch. Here you have some pictures from our trip! Happy & smiling people in whiskey land! And, thanks again for a perfect tour guide / driver! Regards from Åge Skår”

Where did they stay? Based in Elgin, a great base for exploring Speyside, Moray and Aberdeenshire.

We arrange tours of Scotland – specialising in whisky tours – all year round, we have another tour arriving at the end of November, meanwhile – Liz and Paul will be heading north into Speyside mid – December for the MCLEANSCOTLAND STAFF Christmas outing! This year this consists of a couple of days away with two whisky schools (brush up time) a distillery or two, just to say hello and of course plenty of superb Scottish food and drinks! Slainte

www.mcleanscotland.com whisky tour specialists in Scotland.