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Novelty Bottles – Cask Finishes Edition
Casks, amirite? Some of them are familiar, some of them are less so – all of them have an irrevocable (or irreparable, depending on where you’re sitting) effect on the spirit matured within them. In honour of Whisky Show and its theme – The Journey of the Cask – today we’re exploring some of the less familiar – or downright odd – cask-matured drinks wandering the spiritscape, from new releases to storied oldies.
You know what they say: ‘when life gives you left-over grape bits, distil them and whack the resulting high-strength spirit in a red wine cask for six months.’
East London liquor company East London Liquor Co. have followed that old adage to the letter, teaming up with Renegade London Wine to take 2017’s Hereford Bacchus grape pomace and turn it into a hilariously punny, full-flavoured, grappa-style spirit, bottled with a healthy, healthy dose of 80’s film nostalgia.
In many ways, like weird, grapey cask cannibalism.
Now, this one isn’t going to make an awful lot of sense unless you’ve tried it.
The cask impact on this spirit cannot be understated, especially when you consider that this batch of WhistlePig rye whiskey rested in its South American amburana-wood cask for a period of just ten days. Ten days. The result is a powerfully fragrant, richly spicy whiskey, riddled with coconut flavours and tonka-bean character.
Unlike anything you’ve tried before, unless you’ve tried it before…
It’s well known that whisky-maturation regulations are – if you want to be taken seriously, at least – pretty strict. Not only does this ensure that whisky in a bottle is more or less what we think it should be, but it also encourages people to work out some pretty fascinating work-arounds.
One such work-around comes in the form of Amrut Naarangi, which deftly side-steps the question, ‘how do I infuse my whisky with orange without actually infusing my whisky with orange?’ by filling an ex-oloroso sherry cask with white wine and orange peel for three years, emptying it out, then finishing a three-year-old whisky in it for three more years.
Bravo, Amrut. Bravo.
What happens when you – rumour has it, accidentally – finish a single malt Scotch whisky in a cask which previously contained gin? Well, Glorious Bastard, that’s what.
Contrary to common sense, academic wisdom and, indeed, previous personal experience, whisky + gin seems to, in this instance at least, work. Juniper enhances this single malt’s citrus character while balancing out some of its sweeter parts with that particular gin-y bitterness.
Also, being a child stuck in a grown-up’s body, I think swear words on commercial goods are funny.
Bastard. Hehe.
Have you ever been just kind of, you know, hangin’ out, chillin’, letting your mind wander, and suddenly thought to yourself, ‘phwoar, yeah, whisky and tequila and mezcal probably taste pretty nice together’?
Now we’re no mixologists but, no, neither have we, to be honest. But then we’re not superstar independent Irish whisky bottler JJ Corry!
The Battalion, named for a battalion of Irishmen who fought for Mexico in 1846, is a blended Irish whisky finished in ex-mezcal and ex-Tequila casks. Sounds like a strange choice but, now we think about it, that slightly smoky, herbal edge might be pretty interesting.
A recent re-do of Scotch whisky maturation rules to allow ageing in agave-spirit casks means we’re likely to see a whole lot more of this sort of thing, too…
The world of cask-finishes has been to some weird places, and it’s not getting any less adventurous. That being said, there are some places which, once visited, need not be explored again.
Billy’s very own bottle of Hotscotch.
In 2002 for instance, the SMWS finished whisky in a cask seasoned with Tabasco sauce. The result was, by all accounts, a brain-meltingly fiery whisky which, while undrinkable on its own, went on to live a happy life of saucedom in the form of Hotscotch.
Image from ScotchWhisky.com.
The descent into madness continues with the now all-but-ungettable, nigh-on-mythological Fishky – a single cask of Bruichladdich finished in a cask previously used to store herring. It is, according to our very own Billy Abbott, “very bad” – he’s not tried it himself, but has patiently held the hand of many an adventurous whisky geek who has, as they tearfully recounted its terrible, innate, fishy wrongness. But ours is not to wonder why – only to marvel at the, well… marvellousness of it all.
WHISKY SALE
Bunnahabhain 1991 – Aged 26 Years – Cask Strength 50.3% – First Fill Sherry Butt – 144 Bottles
£335.00
£268.00
(Free UK Next Day Delivery as always)
Back by popular demand! The final parcel of a 1995 vintage single sherry butt expression of the Highland malt whisky bottled June 2019 by Signatory Vintage. Clynelish 23 Year Old 1995 vintage Highland single malt Scotch whisky. Matured in a refill sherry butt #11242 bottled June 2019 by Signatory Vintage for the Cask Strength Collection. 592 bottles. Clynelish Distillery is a malt whiskey distillery situated at Brora on the Sutherland coast in the Highland whisky region. The original Clynelish Distillery was founded in 1819 for the Sutherland Estate and re-placed by the new and adjacent distillery in 1967. The new distillery has been enlarged in recent years to include six stills and is now a major contributor to the Johnnie Walker range of blended Scotch. Clynelish 12 Year Old and Distillers Edition are Classic Malts of Scotland.
Shop – Clynelish 1995 Signatory – $194.83
Saturday, October 5th 2-5PM:
Scotch Tasting:
Bowmore & Glen Garioch
Try Islay and Highland scotches at this expert presented “Single Malt Saturday” tasting, featuring legendary distilleries Bowmore and Glengarioch. We’ll have a variety of rare and award-winning single malts to try from 2-5PM, with pourlist details to be revealed as event approaches.
RSVP to keep up to date!
Complete your Collection
We’re having a massive sale on ‘Game of Thrones’ branded whiskies, with most 50% to 75% off their original sale price! Even if you’re not a series fan, you can get Lagavulin, Talisker, Clynelish, and more single malt scotches at a fraction of the price during this sale.
Click Here for the Game of Thrones Single Malt Sale
Hot off the Press!!!
We don’t have an image yet as this is literally live from the John Crabbie distillery!
Be the first to get in in this eagerly anticipated release….we only have a handful to sell
A sumptuous and highly collectable Whisky from John Crabbie’s.
This 1988 Distilled 30 year old comes from a very well known but unnamed Speyside Whisky Distillery specialising in Sherry Cask Whisky, using the same liquid as previous 25 and 30 year old releases.
This is a highly sought after whisky and will not be around long. A fantastic price for a 30 year old from this hugely collectable distillery
Casks – a glossary of terms
There are lots of technical terms bandied around when talking about casks. This list will demystify some of them.
Amburana – a South American hardwood, occasionally used for maturing cachaça and very occasionally for maturing whiskey. It imparts a distinctive tonka-bean flavour, combining vanilla, coconut and cherries.
American Oak – an oak native to America, Most commonly used to mature American whiskey when new, but reused to age and rest many other spirits around the world. Also known as Quercus Alba.
American Standard Barrel – a 200 litre cask.
Angel’s Share – the spirit that evaporates from cask while it is maturing.
Barrel – strictly speaking, an abbreviation of American Standard Barrel, but often used (inaccurately) to refer to any type of cask.
Bilge – the bulging section around the waist of a cask.
Blood tub – a 30-50 litre cask
Bung – a piece of wood (or occasionally rubber) used to seal the hole in a cask
Bung cloth – a piece of hessian wrapped around a bung before it is inserted into the bung hole. It makes it easier to extract the bung and also helps keep the seal liquid tight
Bung extractor – a tool used to pull out bungs. It is screwed into the wood of the bung and then pulled to extract it.
Bung hole – the hole drilled out of the bilge or head to allow filling and emptying.
Bung stave – a stave with a bung hole drilled into it.
Butt – a 500 litre cask.
Casks being charred at Loch Lomond distillery
Char – the burnt top layer on the inside of many casks, which acts as a filter during maturation.
Chinkapin – a type of American white oak with scientific name Quercus Muehlenbergii. It is very rarely used in whiskey maturation.
Croze – the groove on the inside of a cask at top and bottom that the head slots into.
Dechar/Rechar – a cask that has had the layer of char scrapped off before being recharred. This rejuvenates the cask, exposing new wood to the spirit that is filled into the cask.
Dunnage warehouse – a traditional warehouse where casks are stored on the sides, racked on top of each other.
European Oak – a term that encompasses a number of different oak species, but is generally used to refer to Quercus Robur. The flavour characteristics of casks made from European oak vary widely depending on the provenance of the wood.
First fill – a cask that has been used once before and has been refilled.
Head – the circular section at the top and bottom of a cask.
Hogshead – a 230-250 litre cask. Often made by adding extra staves to an American Standard Barrel.
Hoop – a band of metal that holds a cask together.
Mizunara – a species of oak that is found in Japan and north-eastern Asia. Also called Quercus Mongolica.
Octave – a 50 litre cask
Palletised warehousing. The stacks often go much higher
Palletised warehouse – a warehouse where casks are stored on their ends, stacked on pallets which themselves are stacked on top of each other.
Paxarette – a concentrated wine used for flavouring and colouring. It was often used to season sherry casks, giving them a punchy of sherry flavour. However, the practise has been against Scotch whisky regulations since the late 1980s/early 1990s.
Pièce – a 205 litre cask most-often used in French wine-making.
Pipe – a cask used for maturing port. 350+ litres in size, and usually closer to 500 litres.
Quarter cask – a 125 litre cask, one quarter of a butt.
Quarter-sawn – a method of breaking down a log such a way that the grain is more vertical through the planks. It increases the strength of the planks and allows more grain contact when they are made into casks.
Quercus Alba – the scientific name of American white oak.
Quercus Mongolica – the scientific name for Mizunara.
Quercus Robur – the scientific name of the most common type European oak.
Racked warehouse – a warehouse with shelves for storing casks on their sides.
Reed – a piece of material (traditionally dried reeds) pressed between the head and the croze to make a cask water-tight at the ends.
Refill cask – a cask that has been used to store spirit at least twice: first as virgin oak, then as first-fill then as refill.
Rejuvenated cask – another term for dechar/rechar.
Seasoned cask – casks that have had another liquid stored in them specifically to infuse the wood with some of the characteristics of that liquid.
Seasoning – the process of drying a piece of wood to make it more suitable for use as in building a cask.
Shave/Toast/Rechar aka STR – a process similar to dechar/rechar where a cask has a small amount of wood removed from the inside of the cask to reveal more active wood, which is then toasted and recharred. A method pioneered by the late Dr Jim Swan.
A solera. Image courtest of SherryNotes
Solera – in sherry, a system of continuous fractional blending where a notional row of casks is combined by occasionally drawing some sherry from the final cask, leaving the cask still with liquid in, and then refilling it from the previous cask in the row. That cask is refilled from the previous one and so on until the first in the row, which is refilled with new sherry. In whisky, it often refers to a single vat from which a whisky to be bottled is drawn, without emptying the vat, before being refilled with a new batch of the same whisky.
Stave – one of the pieces of wood that make up the sides of a cask.
Sulphur stick – a stick of sulphur burnt inside a cask to disinfect it before filling. No longer commonly used, but some older casks still have a sulphuric note from their earlier use. Much hated by whisky-writer Jim Murray.
Toast – the process of heating the staves of a cask, activating the flavour compounds within and helping them bend into the shape.
Tun – a large vat used for marrying multiple casks.
Valinch – a long, tapered tube used for extracting whisky from a cask. The valinch is inserted through the bung hole and allowed to fill. The user then place their finger over the hole at the end, stopping air from getting into the tube, and the valinch is removed. As air can’t get in the end, the whiskey (mostly) stays in the tube, allowing it to be poured into a glass.
Virgin oak – oak that has not been exposed to a spirit before; a first-use cask.
Distilled at Brora on the Sutherland coast in 1978, this limited edition expression has been bottled one year before the almost-lost distillery is due to reopen.Bottled in celebration of the distillery’s 200th anniversary, this single malt was laid down at a time when Brora was producing a peated malt using heavily peated northern Highland barley. Matured for four decades and limited to just 1,819 bottles (in celebration of the anniversary year), this expression is presented at a strength of 49.2% abv.
£4,500.00
Glenrothes 22 Year Old Black Gold
We’ve secured a few more bottles of the single sherry puncheon bottled April 2019 by Morrison & MacKay for the Carn Mor Celebration of the Cask Black Gold series. Rich, sweet sherry cask matured Speyside single malt.
Glenrothes Distillery was established in the narrow valley of the Rothes Burn on the west side of Rothes in the Speyside whisky region by James Stuart & Co. in 1878. This is a large malt whiskey distillery owned by Berry Bros & Rudd of London, with eighteen washbacks, ten copper stills singing in their own mighty cathedral and has retained its traditional pagoda roof. Popular distillery releases include Glenrothes 1995, 1998 and Glenrothes Peated.
SHOP GLENROTHES 22 YEAR OLD- $234.24
How are casks made?
A Jameson cooper is a happy cooper…
The concept of the wooden cask hasn’t changed much since it first came into being, but the practice of making it has gradually been refined over the past few millennia.
That’s not to say there wasn’t trial and error involved – things like the collapsible shipping cask and the Da Vinci-esque cask cleaning machine, both beautifully illustrated in Scientific American in the 1800s, have fallen by the wayside – but today making casks is a superb blend of art and science.
Coopers – professional cask-makers – will craft casks to a distillery’s specifications, altering things such as the intensity of the char by precise amounts to create the desired chemical reaction between wood and liquid.
Depending on what’s destined to go into it, for example bourbon or sherry, a cask is made in slightly different ways. To give you general overview, however, let’s take a look at how whisky casks are commonly made.
Oak is widely used, not least because it grows in helpful ways and imparts pleasant flavours, and you can learn more about how different types affect whisky on Tom’s blog post. For best results, the tree should be at least 70 years old.
The oak is cut into long thin pieces and dried, traditionally outside, for several years. This removes moisture from the wood and reduces its harsh tannins. The way the wood is cut is crucial, as a tree naturally contains flow paths for water and nutrients, and cutting along the faster flow paths can result in leakages. Once seasoned, the planks are then carefully shaped into staves.
The ends of the staves are fitted together around one iron hoop, forming a skirt-like structure. Heat is then applied in order to bend the staves into shape, which is traditionally done over an open flame and known as toasting. The toasting process also caramelises the wood sugars, resulting in flavours of caramel, nuts and liquorice, and breaks down the wood’s lignin into compounds that result in flavours like spice, vanilla and flowers. Different toasting levels – light, medium and heavy – produce different effects.
Metal hoops are applied to the barrel to keep its shape through continuous pressure.
A blazing barrel at Loch Lomond
Barrels destined for sherry and wine tend to stop at toasting, but the pyromaniac bourbon makers go one step further and set the cask aflame. Ok, they’re not really pyromaniacs: by law bourbon must be aged in a new, charred barrel. It still looks fun, though.
Charring, which is measured in levels – the 55 second Level 4 char being the staple – changes the wood further and creates a thin layer of carbon that acts as a filter for impurities like sulphur, removing them from the spirit within.
The finishing touches are applying the cask head(s) – the bit on either end – drilling a bunghole so spirit can be added, and adding the final hoops. Once these are complete, the finished cask is ready to be filled with new make and start its minimum three year journey to become whisky.
If you want to learn more about the art of coopering, you could take a tour of the Speyside Cooperage, or watch this moody and dramatic Macallan video of casks being made in Jerez. Alternatively, kick back with this gem from British Pathé, in which an apprentice cooper is gleefully initiated with excellent 1940s commentary.
