GlenDronach Grandeur Batch 6
24 year old Highland single malt matured in Oloroso Sherry casks. A favourite with connoisseurs and collectors. Limited release of 1,180 bottles.
www.ralfy.com explores an eccentric but very rewarding little peat-monster with Whisky Review 509 – Longrow 11yo Port casks @ 51,8%vol
Sherry casks part three: what goes into a sherry cask?
[You can find the first two parts of this series at: What was a sherry cask? and What is a sherry cask? ]
In the last post, I talked about how the type of wood that makes up a cask has a large effect on the spirit that goes into it. However, if the cask has already had a liquid stored in it, then that too will obviously have some influence as well. In the case of a sherry cask, that liquid will either be sherry or another similar fortified wine.
Palomino grapes, fresh from the vines, ready for pressing
It starts, as you might expect, with grapes. The most common grape used to make sherry is Palomino, which produces a low-sugar, low-acid, generally uninteresting wine. While that’s not a good combination for table wine, it’s perfect for sherry – the complexity of flavour will come from the maturation process. The grapes are pressed, with the results each pressing being set aside for a different grade of sherry, and the juice is left to ferment. Once it’s reached around 12-13% abv, it’s racked into casks and choices are made as to the type of sherry it will become.
With a thick layer of flor on the surface of the sherry, it looks a little murky
Firstly, fino. This is a dry style that’s very light in colour, with a zingy, nutty and yeasty character. To make it, you fortify the wine up to about 15% using a high-strength grape spirit, which strengthens the wine but is still low enough in alcohol to keep alice the yeasts suspended in the liquid. They clump on the surface to form a protective layer known as flor, which helps digest any sugars remaining in the wine as well as keeping the colour light, by preventing contact with the oxygen in the air. American oak casks are almost always used to mature fino and it’s not often seen in the whisky world, with recent exceptions like the Glenfarclas 1966 Fino Cask, Kavalan Fino and the legendary Bowmore 1964 vintage fino bottlings.
Secondly, oloroso. This is the style that’s most commonly associated with whisky casks, and is a rich wine with some residual sweetness. The style varies quite a lot, as you’ll often find that olorosos sold in the UK are sweetened to better match the sugar-loving British palate. By contrast, Spanish olorosos will often be quite dry, with a nutty character. Either way, the process starts by fortifying the wine to about 17%, which kills the yeasts, and allows the wine to mature while exposed to the air. It will darken in colour and change in flavour over time, increasing in complexity and losing any rough edges.
When it comes to whisky making, a third wine is becoming increasingly important – Pedro Ximénez, aka PX. It starts out as a regular white grape, but is dried to an almost raisin-like level before being pressed, concentrating the sugars. The juice that you do get from the shrivelled grapes is very sugary, and when it’s made into sherry it remains sweet. While you can find it on its own, and is great poured over vanilla ice cream, it’s also used to sweeten other wines, such as UK-bound olorosos.
In one of the Martin warehouses – lots of sherry
At this point the wine is ready to be drunk, and traditionally it would have been filled into a cask to be transported to where it was to be sold. As export regulations no longer allow that, the bodegas creating whisky casks try and replicate the process on site.
At Bodegas José y Miguel Martin, they first fill their new casks with sacrificial young oloroso, to draw out some of the oak’s intensely woody flavour. The wine is left in the cask for a few months before being decanted and filled into another cask. After seasoning four casks, the wine is too oaky to drink and will be turned into sherry vinegar.
The casks are not done yet, and are filled with more oloroso and left for between months and years to further season. Once the cask is deemed ready, the sherry is decanted and used to fill the first cask of a solera. The solera casks are old and perfect for maturing the oaky wine, allowing the woodiness to fade over time, becoming part of the character of an old oloroso.
The cask, now empty, is shipped to Scotland, where it will start a new life: maturing Scotch whisky.
The official deadline for receiving your final UK orders (all overseas deadlines have now past) for delivery before Christmas is MIDDAY, Friday 19th December. We will of course continue to send out after this deadline, but this is the official courier cut off point for guaranteed delivery. Call us with any queries 0131 524 9380.
For guaranteed Christmas delivery to:
BELGIUM, DENMARK, FRANCE, GERMANY, IRELAND, LUXEMBOURG, MONACO and NETHERLANDS.
Please order by 12 noon tomorrow, Wednesday 17th December. Will are still accepting order after this but will not be guaranteeing a Christmas delivery.
Has there ever been a whisky more aptly designed for the festive season than our very own Great King Street Glasgow Blend? With its full body, rich vein of smokiness, sherried nose and characteristic Compass Box sweetness it is a paragon of versatility for the weeks of feasting that lie ahead. Big, bold and complex enough to be enjoyed neat as a digestif, it can also be paired throughout your festive meals with blue-veined cheese, charcuterie, gingerbread or spiced puddings. Or if you’ve a little time on your hands, why not try a warming Glasgow is Burning cocktail: take 45ml Glasgow Blend, 15ml red vermouth, 2 drops Orange bitters and 1 barspoon Bénédictine. Stir with ice, strain and serve straight up garnished with orange zest. For more information about Great King Street Glasgow Blend, click here.
This week Joe Ellis reviews the most talked about whisky of the year, the Haig Club.
It is that time of year again when I get told I am to sit and write a newsletter and begrudgingly I start, wondering how I am going to fill the page, only to find that I have so much to tell you that space becomes a rare commodity rather than a problem.
In some ways this has been the longest year ever and in others it has gone in the blink of an eye. Let’s start at the beginning; after another cracking Christmas period and a rather good Jan / Feb, suddenly the brakes slammed on and it seemed the public of Britain simply stopped shopping. Luckily, you kept visiting the distillery, so no harm done. Slowly over the summer, you all appeared to realise your drinks cupboards were empty and life has returned to normal just in time for us to be able to turn on the heating – so thank you to all of you for your continued shopping habits!
The distillery has seen lots of changes. The first change this year was the building of Bond 3, which is our latest maturation warehouse. This extra space should allow us to mature over 4000 casks on site – which if you were to bottle them all at once would be well over a million bottles of whisky! Quite extraordinary really. Sadly we will never get to see all that whisky for a couple of reasons; the Angels in Norfolk are rather greedier than their northern relatives, taking nearly 3 times as much and some of the whisky will be in the sheds for 50 years, which may be beyond my expiration date. We have also put a little extension onto Warehouse 1 to allow a lovely covered doorway that you, our customers, can use. This is a great change to our distillery tours, the old video has been retired and in its place is a visit to Bond 1. A great improvement and appears to have been a good decision judging by the feedback from those of you who have done the new and improved tour. Bond 1 has even had some cool lighting installed to give a lovely atmospheric feeling to the area.
New arrivals at the distillery… lets start with the most fun and sometimes most annoying arrival – George. When George first arrived in Norfolk, he was adorable, a bit goofy and gangly but spent most of his time dozing or eating; somehow since July he has turned into a rather large, very handsome Labrador. He is the new distillery dog! We are still undertaking his training and he adores seeing people at the distillery, but he appears to have decided that the best way to welcome people to the distillery is with a very loud woof. Slightly intimidating for those who aren’t sure about dogs – so I am working on this. Also he hasn’t worked out that the coffee shop is a perpetual source of food – which worries me as I am taking this as an indication of slightly below average Labrador IQ!
We have been fairly restrained with new releases this year with just 2 new batches of chapter 13 and a chapter 16. The autumn Chapter 13 is fantastic and allows us to support the poppy appeal which seemed appropriate this year. We have also re-launched our Norfolk Nog after a brief absence. It is much improved as it is now made with full matured single malt and is a slightly gentler 21%, well worth trying.
By the time you get this newsletter – we will have a brand new swanky website up and running. It should make life easier for you to find out what is going on and to buy stuff. Please email or call us when you find a bit that doesn’t work or the obligatory spelling mistake. I will write and tell you all about the new website in the new year. It has some very cool new features.
The English Whisky Co. was a lifelong dream of my father James and having built the distillery in 2006, he watched with great pride as our whisky found market places around the world and picked up award after award. He was also very proud of the fact that we appear to have spearheaded a revival of the English whisky industry, with a potential 5 distilleries in the pipeline at present. Perhaps the thing he loved most though was the fact that a lot of you visited the distillery and he had a chance to meet you and say hello. James Nelstrop sadly passed away in September but will be immortalised by his whisky and his founding role in the emergence of an English whisky industry. He would have been incredibly chuffed to know that Chapter 14 has been awarded ‘Best European Whisky 2015’ beating our friends from Scotland and Ireland!
On a lighter note… I hope you have all had a great 2014, are looking forward to Christmas – hopefully to be spent in good company, with good food and good drink. We are very proud to have you as our customers and obviously hope you find time to enjoy a little English Whisky over the hols or even better – come and visit us. We are having a half day on Christmas Eve, will be shut Christmas Day, Boxing Day and New Years day, but any other time we will be open and delighted to see you.
Andrew Nelstrop
Managing Director
English Whisky Co. Ltd
St George’s Distillery
Harling Road Roudham
Norfolk NR16 2QW
www.ralfy.com needs direct action with a feisty malt with Whisky Review 508 – Glenfarclas 105 single malt @ 60%vol
The Whisky Shop Dufftown 12 Days to the 25th 25% Off Christmas Sale on 12 Stunning Whiskies
At The Whisky Shop Dufftown we are counting down to Christmas with a very unique sale which started on 13 December. With 12 (ish) days to go to 25th December we have selected 12 stunning whiskies and discounted them by 25%. And we are offering free delivery to UK addresses until the end of the year.
These whiskies are in very short supply so don’t delay!
Day – Whisky – Price – Sale – Price
1 Glenfarclas 1963 Family Cask Rifle and Shot Gun Cleaning kit £ 7,500.00 £ 5,625.00
2 Benriach 1966 46 Years Old Vestige £ 3,995.00 £ 2,996.00
3 Glendronach 1968 Recherche £ 2,750.00 £ 2,062.00
4 Private Collection Glenlivet 1954 £ 1,825.00 £ 1,368.00
5 Highland Park 40 Years Old £ 1,686.00 £ 1,264.00
6 Glen Garioch 1958 46 Years Old £ 1,500.00 £ 1,125.00
7 Old Pulteney 40 Years Old £ 1,490.00 £ 1,117.00
8 Director’s Cut Port Ellen 35 Years Old £ 840.00 £ 630.00
9 Dalmore 25 Years Old £ 600.00 £ 450.00
10 Isle of Jura 1976 £ 500.00 £ 375.00
11 Director’s Cut Ardbeg 1991 23 Years Old £ 485.00 £ 363.00
12 Old Malt Cask Macallan 1988 25 Years Old £ 455.00 £ 341.00
We have loads more offers in our festive sale. Check out all of our Special Offers here.
The prices are quoted inclusive of VAT. Shipping charges will apply but we are offering free delivery in the UK on all purchases made up until December 31st. No further discounts can be applies to any of our Special Offers.
