A return to malty grace
Last year, we hit out into our supplier’s warehouses to find as many butts as possible. We left no sherried stone unturned. It didn’t matter what the distillery was or how many fills, we wanted to taste everything they had. Needless to say, in a trend driven marketplace, having sherry butts is the easy play. And having lots of big butts might sound fun, but finding the right ones is not always easy. There’s a lot of bad sherried whisky out there and there’s a lot of pretense and expectation that comes along with listing a cask as “sherry aged.” The love for big powerful sherry cask aged whisky is nearly as old as the love of malt itself, but it’s a much more diverse category than many people realize. We wanted our selections to reflect that, which was maybe more polarizing than expected. We had a Blair Athol that generally everyone loved for its balance and complexity, except for that one guy who thought it was the worst he’d ever had. We had the Ben Nevis that was as a funk bomb, not without warning. We had a Tobermory in a third fill butt that came out of the bottle like white wine - I got more than a few confused customers wondering why they hadn’t gotten the sherried version. Then here was that nearly nuclear Glenturret. A veritable rollercoaster of sherry.
Colorful Refill Hoggies
But this year’s selection is notably devoid of plethora of sherry aged malts. Instead, our core offerings champion a return to malt driven style as the center piece of our whisky pantheon. Yes, there are several excellent sherried whiskies on the alter this year, mostly in the very rare and high-end categories, but the real gems are simply lovely mature distillates in perfectly restrained refill hogshead. The hogshead is Scotch’s least understood barrel. Most generally know that it’s a barrel size, but the how, what and why is not very clear. A hogsheads barrel is a reconstructed cask from multiple sources, typically of used American oak (bourbon), sized to 250 liters with new oak heads.
Blair Athol’s Still House
The use of coopers was commonplace in Scotland and wood, sourced mostly from the US, was once shipped only broken down and needed to be reconstructed on the far end. Now barrels are shipped whole and the coopers are mostly consolidated, but the industry still utilizes this size for a large portion of its maturation. It’s said to have the best ratio of oak to spirit for maturation, but equally likely is the fact that it can hold 50 more liters of whisky in the same amount of warehouse space as a bourbon barrel. Plus, it’s a convenient way to make use of staves that didn’t previously go together or from otherwise damaged barrels. The Scottish are nothing if not thrifty.
A first fill hoggie will have some new oak tannins from the heads (flat top and bottom of the barrel) but is mostly similar to a first fill bourbon only with smaller oak to spirit ratio. We had a first fill hoggie last year filled with Tamdhu for 18 years and it had tons of punchy oak. That’s why if you want to highlight the quality of a distillate, particularly a tasty one, a second fill hoggie is one of the best formats to accomplish that. As a whisky matures, this relationship becomes even more meaningful and effective. Yet, strongly complex whiskies can also work well in their youth with a refill hoggie that’s not too quiet and conversely delicate, finesse driven malts often work wonders behind a relatively discreet barrel. We have over 40 single casks exclusives in stock today, the vast majority of which are in refill hogsheads. Why? Because they just taste so damned good. I will always be a sherry nut, but sometimes it’s just much more relaxing to let the malt do the talking.
The condensers at Blair Athol
Here are two casks that we’ve bottled in stark contrast to last year’s versions – a stunningly fruity and fun Ben Nevis and a wonderfully otherworldly Blair Athol. Each represents exceptional value for the dollar, but more importantly the quality of these distilleries spirit is on full display. The saddest part of not having a 500-liter Butt is that we get fewer than half as many bottles from a barrel. Here are notes from each of these stupendous casks:
The wonderful Ben Nevis Distillery has become a staple in Whisky Season. Not only does it seem to be available, but almost every cask we taste has something to love. Last year it we bought two, a young bourbon barrel from Signatory and a fabulous sherry butt from Old Malt Cask. Now we've come back with this insanely delicious expression that falls right between those two in age and style. The wonderful Nevis malt tends to have this gorgeous fruity funkiness that can be somewhat divisive, but in this case I think it's restrained enough to appeal to even the most sensitive noses. Give it a little air in the glass before you get in there. The nose shows some wonderful petrol quality (is it Pfalz?), behind that bouquet of dried herbs, sultanas, salted nuts, lemon peel and earthy malt. The palate is spice and sweet at the same time, with a lemon custard, black pepper, crunchy stoniness and a bright lifted finish. Like ALL our cask strength offerings, the splash of water should be ubiquitous now. It almost never ruins things and, in this case, takes this malt to a whole new level, but instead of shifting the flavor profile it just heightens and rounds the edges perfectly - maybe it's a bit less petrol and much more lemon. The palate is just shimmering now. Still plenty of zesty zip, chalky mineral and pepper which I love, but now with a honeyed quality that was missing at full strength. A real Nevis-y one here that leaves you smell the empty glass longingly.
The "big" distillery in the town of Pitlochry is one we've long sought out. Last year we had a great big sherry butt that many found delicious and others found very funky. I absolutely appreciate that not every cask is going to appeal to every customer, but some barrels are so overtly delicious and easy drinking that I can recommend them to almost anyone with great confidence. In extreme contrast to the controversial cask last year, this Blair Athol is so obvious and approachable it's hard to argue with it. The nose is a mélange of fresh cut hay, Seville orange, a little dill maybe and Barlett pears. The palate is sweet up from with some biscuit and fresh malt coming through. With water the nose expands significantly on the pear and orange components. The palate becomes very racy and minerally with a building white pepper tempered by malty wafers on the finish. A zesty lively drink that is really hard to put down. This one should be much less divisive than others Athols.