As this year draws to a close, I sat down with Global Brand Ambassador Gordon Dundas to reflect on a successful 2025 and take a peek at what 2026 will bring for Tamdhu. Thank you for your continued support and dedication – we hope that this holiday season your heart is full of joy and your dram glass is full of Tamdhu. 🥃😉
Slàinte Mhath,
Sandy McIntyre
Distillery Manager
We wanted to take a moment to look back on the highlights of this year and some of our favorite moments for the brands we represent.
We’ve had a lot to be thankful for this year. The amazing brands we represent have found their way into the homes and hearts of so many people here in the US. Our teams have worked diligently to bring awareness to the very special small to medium sized distilleries and independent bottlers in our portfolio.
We feel very fortunate to have the honor of bringing such amazing products to the minds and hearts of the consumers that support our brands and to those who don’t yet know they love them. We’re so blessed to have the amazing distribution partners and retailer support that we do in order to grow and sustain the awareness our products have.
As we look beck on another year, we’re very excited to celebrate some pretty amazing accomplishments:
With heartfelt gratitude,
~Sam
WRAPPING UP 2024 AT SPRINGBANK
As 2024 comes to an end, we would like to wish our friends a Happy New Year and give an update on what’s been happening at the distilleries this year, what the team has been up to, and what to look forward to next year.
LIMITED RELEASES
During the second half of 2024, there were a number of limited releases from our distillery. One batch, released in August, included our Springbank 18yo and Springbank 21yo. Our November batch included the Springbank 10yo Amontillado, Springbank 12yo Cask Strength, and Longrow 18yo.
Following into the new year, the next batch in February will include our Springbank 8yo Local Barley, Springbank 30yo, and Longrow 100 PROOF. These whiskies will be available to purchase through the usual retail channels.
COUNTDOWN COLLECTION
The third edition of our five-part Countdown Collection series, designed to commemorate Springbank’s journey towards its 200th anniversary, is set to be released early next year. This upcoming bottling will be a 30 Year Old Springbank matured in bourbon and sherry casks.
As with each edition in this series, it will be limited to just 500 bottles and available to purchase by Springbank fans all across the world. Stay tuned to our socials to find out more about this release…
With each Countdown Collection release, a prize draw will be conducted the following year for purchasers who have returned their prize draw stub from their certificate. We recently announced that the top prize in our upcoming prize draw for those who purchased the 2024 Countdown Collection 26yo bottling will again be a week on our whisky school.
See more information on this announcement and the runners up prizes here.
All those who have stored their bottle at the Distillery Shop in Campbeltown for collection will be automatically entered into this prize draw. The winners will be announced early next year!
SOCIETY BOTTLINGS
In October, we released the second Springbank Society bottling of the year, a Springbank 5yo 100 PROOF fully matured in Oloroso Sherry casks and bottled at 57.1% as a 70cl. This whisky was bottled for the Society to showcase the stark contrast in flavours when compared to the previous Springbank 5yo 100 PROOF fully matured in Bourbon casks, released in early 2023.
The upcoming Society bottling will be released early next year, so stay tuned!
TASTING PACKS
After great feedback, we have continued to make tasting packs which include a variety of the harder-to-obtain whiskies from our releases. Our second tasting pack release was sold in Summer 2024 and included samples from our February and June 2024 releases.
To accompany this, our Sales Team hosted an online tasting to guide viewers through the drams and answer any questions they had. Catch the replay on our Facebook or YouTube Channel.
Earlier this month, we launched our most recent tasting pack sets which were offered to Society members first before the general public sale.
The lineup for these tasting packs:
Springbank 18 Year Old 46% (2024) – 2cl
Springbank 21 Year Old 46% (2024) – 2cl
Kilkerran 16 Years 46% (2024) – 2cl
Springbank Amontillado Cask Matured 55% (2024) – 2cl
Springbank 12 Years Cask Strength 56.2% (2024) – 2cl
Longrow 18 Year Old 46% (2024) – 2cl
The next online tasting for this tasting pack release will be held on Thursday, 30th January 2025 at 7pm (GMT). Catch it live or on replay via our Facebook, Instagram and YouTube Channel.
We hope you can join us! 🥃
PRODUCTION TEAM’S DISTILLERY UPDATE
– Findlay Ross, Director of Production
As another year draws to a close, we are left asking ourselves how the year has passed by so quickly? I’m reliably told ‘it’s an age thing’ but it truly doesn’t seem like 11 months ago we fired everything back up at Springbank following our Christmas holidays, and it certainly doesn’t feel like we should be in our last week of production at Glengyle as I write this!
As always we have had our usual split of 34 weeks of production at Springbank followed up with 12 weeks of production at Glengyle, and this has been one of the smoothest years in recent memory in terms of minimal disruption due to equipment issues or all the usual gremlins that come with operating a 196 year old distillery. We have put a real focus on preventative maintenance and expanding the range of servicing and auditing that takes place on site in recent years, and we feel like this has contributed greatly to making sure old pieces of equipment are flagged up and repaired or replaced before we get to the catastrophic failure stage.
Summer temperatures remained much closer to historical spring and autumn temperatures, which really aided in the maltings – allowing us to keep temperatures in that 16-20 degrees celsius range which is optimal for producing well modified malt. it is probably the only positive thing I can think of about the ‘summer’ we were handed in Scotland this year!
In terms of spirit output, we have fallen slightly below our target of 264,000 LPA at Springbank as we filled 252,000 LPA into casks. One of the contributing factors to this was the fact we received much more barley from our local farmers this year which allowed us to do 3 weeks of local barley production rather than 1, where the malt only yielded an average 369 LPA/T. The plus side is we will have more local barley to work with in future years, something which I know will be well received by almost everyone.
As things stand we have produced around 81,000 LPA at Glengyle with 2 fillings left to go for the year – a smaller week of highly peated Kilkerran to allow us for one week of our triple distilled expression. Glengyle has had an eventful year as we celebrated it’s 20th anniversary via multiple events, the highlight of which was undoubtably a black-tie dinner enjoyed with our suppliers and customers across the business, followed up the next evening with an unforgettable concert in which legendary Scottish band ‘Travis’ played to a raucous crowd of invited local and not so local guests.
We continue to progress and plan for the future in multiple ways, not least in developing and promoting staff, and we were delighted that long serving Production Supervisor Robert McGarrie accepted his promotion to the position of Assistant Production Manager where he will work closely supporting Production Manager Gavin McLachlan and the wider department.
Our future planning also included further progress on our new bottling and dispatch facility, with foundations poured and progress made on preparing the ground for the erection of the 3 separate areas that will make up the facility.
We look back at 2024 fondly and look forward to 2025 where we plan to improve the site further by upgrading the kiln burner at Springbank to one that can run on LPG and with a higher degree of modulation, as well as refurbishing all the stills at Springbank in September 2025, after many years of dedicated service have started to take their toll on them!
We hope you all have a great festive period and look forward to seeing you on site in 2025!
ONLINE SCOTCH WHISKY AWARDS
On Saturday, 2nd November, fifteen staff from various departments within our company met in the Washback Bar to tune in to this year’s Online Scotch Whisky Awards Ceremony.
Watch the live stream here. We are delighted to have won 1st place awards in following categories for 2024:
Best Value Whisky – Kilkerran 12yo
Best Blended Malt – Campbeltown Loch
Findlay Ross, our Director of Production, spoke to Roy and Ralfy on the live stream to accept both awards and thank them on behalf of J. & A. Mitchell. On another note, as we have previously won the Best Distillery Award three times in a row from 2021 to 2023, we are happy to receive our first Trifecta Award! All three award certificates are now proudly displayed on the wall of our Washback Bar at the Distillery.
MALTS FESTIVAL 2024
In May, we hosted our Springbank and Kilkerran Open Days as part of the 2024 Campbeltown Malts Festival and besides the poor weather, everyone had a great time!Relive the memories here with these two videos by our very own Bar Manager, David Wood, who documented the entire week on camera!
Watch here:
SPRINGBANK OPEN DAY 2024 – VIDEO
KILKERRAN OPEN DAY 2024 – VIDEO
The dates for our festival next year have already been set: Monday 19th to Saturday 24th 2025.
Springbank Open Day – Thursday, 22nd May 2025
Kilkerran Open Day – Friday, 23rd May 2025
If you wish to be added to our mailing list for Springbank / Kilkerran / Cadenhead’s festival events, then please email festival@springbank.scot and you will be notified when further information is available.
We hope to see you there! 🥃
SOCIETY ‘ON TOUR’
During the second half of the year, we embarked on our Springbank Society European Tasting Tour from August to October. These 16 individual tastings across 11 different countries helped us bring the Society to our members and let attendees taste new & upcoming releases before anyone else in the world!
Andrew’s journey across Europe took him to meet Society members in:
Belgium, Netherlands, Germany, Denmark, France, Norway, Italy, Switzerland, Austria, Poland & Sweden. It was great to share these special drams with our most loyal fans, the Springbank Society members! Thanks to everyone who attended. We plan take the Society on more tasting tours in the future!
20TH ANNIVERSARY OF KILKERRAN
To round out this year’s celebrations for Kilkerran’s 20th Anniversary, we decided to host a number of special tastings in the UK, Taiwan, Switzerland, Netherlands, Denmark, and Germany to showcase everything that Kilkerran has to offer!
As a thank you, the majority of these tastings were hosted with retailers who have backed Kilkerran since the very beginning. Then on Friday, 15th November, we hosted a very special tasting in Campbeltown’s Town Hall and welcomed 120 guests from all over to taste Kilkerran whiskies from major milestones throughout the years, followed by a tasty buffet from Argyll Bakeries.
📸 Photo credit to John McFadyen (Website)
On the night, attendees entered the hall and were given an arrival dram of our flagship Kilkerran 12yo and then six pre-poured whiskies were waiting for them at their tables. Of the tasting lineup, one of the whiskies was our new Kilkerran 20yo Single Cask aged in Fresh Madeira for 10 years, then Refill Bourbon for 10 years.
Guests then noticed a small piece of card, with the word “RESERVE”, where they could write their name on the back and reserve a bottle before it went on sale exclusively in the Distillery Shop, the following morning.
📸 Photo credit to John McFadyen (Website)
We hope you have enjoyed celebrating Kilkerran’s 20th Anniversary as much as we have! Now it’s time to start planning for Springbank’s 200th Anniversary in 2028… 🎉
MERRY CHRISTMAS & A HAPPY NEW YEAR
From everyone at J&A Mitchell, we would like to thank you for your continued support this year. Whether that be drinking our whisky, travelling to our distillery, or simply telling a friend about us, we greatly appreciate it.
If you are planning a visit over the festive period, find our end-of-year opening hours on our Facebook and Instagram.
Finally, we all recently headed up to the Glengyle Distillery to pose for our annual Christmas Jumper Day photos! Have a fantastic time over the festive season and we hope to see you in 2025!
Sláinte Mhath 🥃
Springbank Distillery, 9 Bolgam Street, Campbeltown, Argyll, Scotland, PA28 6HZ
Merry Christmas from all of us at The Whisky Shop!
What an incredible year it’s been for our busy elves here at the Santa’s Grotto of the Whisky World! In 2024, we’ve brought you over 100 exciting new releases, 19 engaging Digital Drams sessions, 4 issues of Whiskeria, 150 insightful blog posts, more than 20 fun competitions, and plenty of great savings along the way. And we’re just getting started — 2025 is shaping up to be even bigger, so stay tuned for more fantastic surprises!
A heartfelt thank you to all of our wonderful customers, both old and new. We truly appreciate your support, and we wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year filled with joy (and great whisky)!
Cheers,
The Whisky Shop Team
Sometimes, I sit and write this letter in a surprisingly short amount of time, it just seems to flow, other years… not so much. This year is a not so much year.
I desperately want to lay into politicians and their inability to make real and useful changes; I most desperately want them to look at their own backyard and wonder why they need 34% more civil servants (that’s an additional 200k people!!!) today than in 2016. We do, after all, have computers that are rather faster and better than we had back then to do the form filling, and we definitely have less chance of getting a person to answer our calls.
Whilst lining their own nests, they have decided to un-line yours, and from my point of view, this is not a naturally super way to encourage growth, which they keep harping on about. Rant over.
2024 has been an extraordinary year for The English Whisky Co. The year started slowly with sales not quite hitting the hoped-for heights we so optimistically set, but just as frowns were developing into permanent scowls, one of our core range of whiskies came to the rescue by winning one of the most prestigious awards in the world of whisky. The English Sherry Cask Matured was crowned the World’s Best Single Malt. What a magnificent way to remove frowns and lighten the mood. Sales blossomed, staff cheered up, and the marketing team got busy. From that point on, 2024 just flew by in a blur.
I have the absolute luxury of leaving all the hard work to Mike, Lee and Katy and instead spend my days trying to look busy, but in reality, I’m just pondering the next useful thing I can do to make their lives a little easier. So, after a good day of said pondering, I green-lighted Warehouse 5. Our biggest and best yet (well, biggest anyway). This new warehouse will allow us to mature over twelve thousand casks on-site – this is a lot. A typical cask holds about 300 bottles of whisky, so at any time, we might have nearly 4 million bottles of whisky maturing on site, which should keep us going for a while. The new warehouse will be trialling new forms of dunnage (the method of holding a cask to make sure it doesn’t roll away) and will, I believe, make work easier and smarter on-site. Let’s hope so, as the shed is now built.
The Grain Kitchen (our distillery bistro) has been open under new operators for a year now, and they are so good at what they do. The food is delicious, the staff are friendly, and the place is busy – good for them and good for us; you should visit.
The other momentous change this year has been the total revamp of our distillery shop. Only a year ago, the offering was pretty much limited to whisky (very good whisky 😊), glassware and books. The green light was given to transform the offering, and now we have a mixture of whisky, homewares (to those of you like me who weren’t sure – this is big matches, smelly candles, lovely rugs, funny cards, super chocolate etc etc), lovely food offerings, more but improved glassware and lots more. Oh, including super fancy tins of tea – which are incredibly popular; you should visit!
We have also revamped the conference facilities; they got air conditioning, a new paint job, a wall of casks and some comfy chairs – all of which have proved so popular that we now employ someone just to deal with events – or rather she sells the space and the existing team, who gladly are very busy, have to look after all the extra visitors for events.
Whilst I get the job of saying yes to various projects, it is Katy who suggests quite a lot of them in a way that sometimes I am not even aware I have agreed to, but this appears to be working as the distillery is busy and lively and most importantly profitable this year – phew.
Apparently, I am meant to be signing off on a kid’s playground so that mothers (and of course fathers, grandparents and anyone else roped into being out with their kids) can eat in peace, but at the current rate, extra car parking may have to come first.
Away from the Distillery, we have attended more events than ever, have poured more whisky for showgoers than ever and spread the word. Next year, we will continue this and, hopefully in the spring, will publish a list of where we will be for those of you who can’t get to Norfolk (no passport needed, and the gate on the A11 remains open most of the time).
Away from our green and pleasant land, exports have gone well. I was even tempted into jumping on a plane or two to visit India to see whether they like whisky – yes, they do, a lot. Sadly, their government chooses to levy very large tax rates on the import and sale of whisky, so for now, our customers are likely to be the 1% of the 1%… but that is still a lot of whisky-loving Indian people. Let’s hope it is a marketplace that works, and we make more lifelong friends in the industry.
As always, a huge thank you to my wonderful team and an even bigger thank you to you all for supporting us on our journey. Without your support, we wouldn’t exist. A little teaser for 2025, we turned 18 earlier this year, which should mean we have some fun releases in the pipeline.
Amazing, after my little rant, it did flow, obviously, it is good to open up.
Merry Christmas to you all, I hope you have a fine time and find some wonderful family and friends to share a glass with.
Yours Sincerely,
Andrew Nelstrop
Chairman
As we wrap up 2024, we want to express our deepest gratitude to you, our wonderful customers. Your continued support has been the cornerstone of our journey, and we couldn’t have done it without you. A huge thank you also goes to our incredible team whose passion and hard work bring the Killowen spirit to life every day.
Despite our successes, this year has not been without its challenges, and we stand in solidarity with our fellow distilleries who’ve faced their own hurdles. Their dedication and resilience inspire us to keep moving forward.
Looking ahead to 2025, we’re excited for the new adventures that await, including our upcoming Saga Land Series in collaboration with Irish Mythology Podcast and Fab Cow. Two of the best experts in their relevant fields.
On a final note, next week, we’re delighted to launch our Killowen Peated Rum & Raisin Single Malt at Dublin Airport, and we’re thrilled to share that just today Rum & Raisin has won Gold once again at the 50 Best of Everything Awards!
Nollaig Shona Daoibh Go Léir!
The Stills have been turned off, and we’ve already wrapped up production until January. From us all at Wolfburn, we want to take a moment to thank you for being part of our journey. It’s been an exciting year filled with milestones, new releases, and unforgettable moments – and we couldn’t have done it without you.
From crafting exceptional single-malt whisky to connecting with enthusiasts all over the world, every step has been a pleasure. As we look forward to 2025, we’re already buzzing with excitement for what’s to come.
Of course, none of this would be possible without our amazing team here in Thurso, whose passion and expertise continue to shine in everything we do. And knowing that you enjoy our creations as much as we enjoy making them makes it all the more rewarding.
Here’s to sharing more great drams and memories in the year ahead. Wishing you and your loved ones a joyful Christmas season and a fantastic New Year.
The Wolfburn Team
