Elijah Craig “Toasted Barrel” Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey

(750ml)

$54.99

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93 points Wine Enthusiast

 This needs a few minutes to open up to reveal a rich caramel aroma. The palate is markedly sweet and spicy, showing vanilla, caramel and a mix of cinnamon and cayenne. Adding water tones down the heat and brings a flavor or cinnamon red-hot candies wrapped in caramel squares. A vanilla accent smooths over the long exit. It’s a small-batch Bourbon finished in toasted new oak. (KN)  (7/2021)

Whisky Advocate

 Initially reticent on the nose, with time this reveals gooey caramel, pralines, Hershey’s milk chocolate, and a touch of charred mint leaves. It’s chewy and occasionally sharp on the palate, with oodles of roasted nuts, polished oak, mint, peppery spice, dark chocolate, licorice, tobacco ash, and char. The medium-length finish holds tingling white pepper, unsweetened chocolate, and more polished oak. (SSB, Fall-2020) 

K&L Notes

This is a different take on Elijah Craig’s classic and beloved Small Batch Bourbon. A judicious application of a new toasted barrel take the well-known profile of one of our best-selling bourbons and kicks it up several notches. This whiskey is a new offering from the brand and was recently launched on an allocated basis, making it highly desirable yet difficult to find. From the distillery: “The process begins with fully matured Small Batch, which is dumped and then re-entered at barrel proof into a second, custom toasted new oak barrel designed in partnership with Independent Stave Company. Made with 18-month air dried oak, the finishing barrel is first toasted and then flash-charred using a moderate toast temperature and toast time. An extensive research and development process resulted in a final barrel toast profile bringing forward dark sugar flavors within the wood to create a balance of smokiness and sweetness after months of finishing.”

Email: wine@klwines.com
Phone: (877) KL-WINES (Toll Free 877.559.4637)
K&L Wine Merchants 3005 El Camino Real Redwood City, CA 94061 USA
San Francisco, Redwood City, Hollywood CA

You might have noticed an increase in whisky news from us lately, and it’s just the beginning as we make strides into what is going to to be a very big year for us here at the distillery. While we await the start of construction works at Nunton, Jonny is just back from an educational jaunt to another beautiful Hebridean island, where he was learning some tricks of the trade from our friends at the fantastic Kilchoman Distillery in Islay.

Kilchoman is one of the few Scottish whisky distilleries producing field to bottle whiskies, with barley grown and traditionally floor malted on the island. It was fantastic to learn from such skilled distillers and get some insights into the process that will be the backbone of our own Nunton Whisky.

Over on the mainland our much awaited stills, tanks and tuns are almost ready to set sail for Uist, and knowing how excited we are about it, the team at Forsyths have very kindly been keeping us in the loop with updates and photos of their progress. Time to start stocking up on Brasso and working on those polishing muscles before these beauties arrive in the spring!

Vic Cameron, one of our whisky lecturers says: “A barrel is a type of cask. It’s used for making bourbon, holds 200 litres of spirit and is always made from American oak. There are lots of different types of casks: barrels, hogsheads, puncheons, butts, for example. So, all these are different types of casks.”

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Diagram: Whisky Warehousing Systems

Once a cask is filled with new make spirit, it must be matured for a minimum of three years before it can be called Scotch whisky. How is the spirit stored? This post explains the three types of warehousing systems used in Scotland.📖  Read the Post

Why Learn About Whisky?

We brought together a group of whisky experts and asked them why whisky is such a fascinating topic for study. Our teachers Vic Cameron and Dr Gordon Steele spoke with Fionnán O’Connor (Irish whiskey historian), Michael Walsh (Irish whiskey consultant), Jenny Karlsson (Ardnamurchan Distillery), Scott Sneddon (InchDairnie Distillery) and Andy Colman (Port of Leith Distillery).

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GLENMORANGIE

13 YEAR OLD
COGNAC CASK FINISH

70CL | 46%

£59.75

WAS £74.75

SAVE £15

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A 13-year-old small-batch single malt from Glenmorangie which was finished in refill Cognac casks for four years, adding subtle notes of wood spice and leather to the distillery’s harmoniously fruity spirit.

Highland Single Malt Scotch Whisky Distillery Bottling

A Day in the Life of a Cooper

20 barrels a day? Nae bother! We had the pleasure of chatting to Barry, a cooper at The Balvenie Distillery, about what a typical day in his job involves, from repairing casks to helping the apprentices.

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Benromach 2012 Kiln Dried

Virgin Oak

Creamy and fruity flavours are followed by barley sugar and mixed tropical fruit. Subtle smoke and menthol on the finish. This limited-edition release has been matured in kiln dried Virgin Oak barrels. This results in sweet malted biscuit aromas with lemon and apple. Creamy and fruity flavours are followed by barley sugar and mixed tropical fruit. Subtle smoke and menthol on the finish.

Only £59.00 >

TyndrumWhisky.com
The Green Welly Stop
Tyndrumwhisky, Tyndrum
Crianlarich, Perthshire FK20 8RY
United Kingdom

International Scotch Day: a day to celebrate

Today, we raise a glass to International Scotch Day! Scotch is fundamental to our heritage and our business. We produce over 100 individual Scotch brands; in financial year 2023 Scotch alone made up made up a quarter of Diageo’s total net sales value (see presentation page 4). And we offer award-winning Scotch Whisky experiences to consumers and tourists keen to discover more about this iconic product. (The Johnnie Walker Experience in Princes Street, Edinburgh, was named the World’s Leading Spirit Tourism Experience at the 2023 World Travel Awards)

To celebrate International Scotch Day, here are four of biggest stories from some of Diageo’s iconic Scotch brands and markets from the last six months:

1. Johnnie Walker
   In September the Johnnie Walker team launched Blue Label Elusive Umami – a limited edition release that was inspired by one of the world’s most hard-to-define and alluring flavour profile: umami. It signalled the partnership of two masters of their craft: whisky making with Master Blender Emma Walker and creative gastronomy with Japanese chef Kei Kobayashi. He brings a unique craftsmanship and flair to his cuisine – like the rarity and craft that goes into making every bottle of Johnnie Walker Blue Label. Only one in 25,000 casks succeed in bringing this limited-edition blend to life.The launch created huge excitement and it was officially launched at a remarkable event in Paris. Over the following months teams across the globe celebrated the launch of this remarkable innovation. The official South East Asia launch took place in in Singapore in October, hosting 180 guests from nine markets (Japan, China, India, Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia & the Philippines)
2. Mortlach
   Mortlach, one of Diageo’s most exclusive single malt brands celebrated its 200th anniversary in 2023. And in December Mortlach announced that to honour two centuries of distilling excellence, it would proudly welcome legendary Philippe Starck as its first Creative Director. The MORTLACH x STARCK debut collection will be revealed in Spring 2024. “One of the most visionary contemporary creators, Philippe Starck, joins Mortlach as our true partner and we are proud to be the first Scotch whisky brand he has ever worked with,” said Pedro Mendonça, Diageo’s Global Reserve Managing Director.“Together we will venture into creative new heights, reinventing what whisky will represent to a generation, reimagining and rebuilding the spirit of Mortlach.”
3. Scotch in India
   Back in November at Capital Markets Day, Diageo India CEO Hina Nagarajan took investors through the exciting progress and opportunities that exist in the Scotch category. India is already well established as the biggest whisky market in the world – and the most valuable TBA category in that market, almost twice the size of beer.Interestingly however, she pointed out that Scotch accounts for 13% of the total whisky value in the country and is the fastest growing and most profitable segment. And in the last four years, while there has been premiumisation in the Indian whisky market with the mid-price segment, it is imported Scotch that is on the march, growing at 32% – with our three biggest brands (Johnnie Walker, Black & White and White Dog) all selling over 1m cases each.Hina said: “Post Covid, we took the lead and invested ahead of the industry by focusing on our commercial and luxury business unit and stepped up on new marketing capabilities. Our investments are paying off – with sales value of Scotch doubling in the last two years. This has meant that we have recruited 10m new consumers into Scotch – almost double that of our nearest competitor.”
4. Port Ellen
   And finally, just this week Diageo celebrated the much-anticipated opening of the Port Ellen distillery later this year with a new release. Port Ellen Gemini is a set of two uniquely extraordinary bottles, a testament to the distillery’s rich past and portentous future. At 44 Years Old, Port Ellen Gemini is the oldest ever Single Malt Scotch Whisky to be released directly from the distillery. The whisky was drawn from three exceptional casks specifically selected long ago for this new experiment, and split into two whiskies which took diverging paths of maturation.Port Ellen Gemini Original allows an appreciation of the distillery’s time-honoured craft and the characterful Islay smoke whilst Port Ellen Gemini Remnant uses the rediscovered remnant cask in a world first, capturing the ancestral DNA of the distillery’s past. Closed for over forty years, Port Ellen will be born again as a distillery re-envisioned for the future, pushing the boundaries of experimentation in Scotch Whisky with a mission to investigate the mysterious flavours of smoke.

We will continue to apply the same care, skill and entrepreneurial spirit to creating our Scotch whiskies as the founders of our legendary brands and on International Scotch Day we raise a dram to them.

we are incredibly excited to let you know that our Year Two Nunton Whisky cask offer will be released very, very soon, allowing a small number of extremely lucky whisky fans to own a piece of North Uist Distillery and Hebridean whisky history!

We will be releasing 100 casks of our year two spirit and we just wanted to send out a small reminder that all of the information on how to secure one will be released via our North Uist Distillery Whisky mailing list over the next few days.

Our Year One cask offer broke Scottish whisky records selling out faster than you can say “slàinte mhath”, so please drop us a reply to this email if you would like to be added to the mailing list and be in with a chance of joining the select ranks of Nunton Whisky cask owners!

Slàinte,

The North Uist Distillery Team.

NUNTON WHISKY

LAPHROAIG 1989 VINTAGE FEIS ILE 2007 17 YEAR OLD

Released for the 2007 Fèis Ìle festival on Islay, Laphroaig bottled this 17-year-old single malt exclusively for the Friends of Laphroaig to commemorate the new Friends Lounge. There were only 4000 bottles produced, at a cask strength of 50.3% abv.

In stock now £650.00

Don’t forget The WhiskyGenie has the CHEAPEST PRICES ANYWHERE

Benromach 2012 Air Dried

Virgin Oak

Smooth yet peppery notes, with vanilla, fresh peppermint and oak flavours. Subtle smoke lingers on the finish. This limited-edition release has been matured in air dried Virgin Oak barrels. This results in sweet vanilla fudge aromas with toasted cereal and citrus blossom. Smooth yet peppery notes follow, with vanilla, fresh peppermint and oak flavours. Subtle smoke lingers on the finish.

Only £59.00 >

TyndrumWhisky.com
The Green Welly Stop
Tyndrumwhisky, Tyndrum
Crianlarich, Perthshire FK20 8RY
United Kingdom