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until we catch this Kelpie!
We’re planning to catch this kelpie’s ill-gotten gains in 2022. He was last seen dragging the cask over the peaty moors towards the moss sodden, freshwater loch that is Loch Gearach on Islay in 2011
Rumour has it he stole a first fill, Sauternes cask filled with the finest, Islay “Rhinns” peated, spirit.
To give you some background to what we know;
The cask is French Oak, this imparts a much more complex range of flavours in the ‘buttered toast’ spectrum.
90% of whisky in Scotland is placed in American Oak casks, so this should make this whisky something a bit more unusual. There is, however, a downside to French Oak, it allows more evaporation (the “angel’s share”) so there will be less for us to drink!
It’s also a “first fill” cask. Each time a cask is filled with whisky, the effect of the wood in the cask is reduced until on about the third or fourth fill, it has little effect at all. The best whisky is matured in “first fill” casks as this has the maximum effect.
Sauternes is made in Bordeaux, France using Semillon grapes which are allowed to experience “noble rot” with the Botrytis fungus. This is deliberately allowed to affect the grapes and is caused by the damp, foggy, autumn weather the region experiences.
The rot reduces the water content of the grape whilst increasing the sugar content. The use of these noble, rotten grapes is very difficult to adapt to an industrialised wine making process. The grape pickers cannot pick the grapes in a regular mechanised way, but have to pick the grapes after examining the degree of rot. All of these factors therefore, reduce the yield for the Château. To keep the sugar content of the grape juice at a constant level the châteaus use a method called “cryoextraction” where the grapes are frozen and then pressed. The grape juice’s water content is reduced, but this reduction also reduces the yield of grape juice even further. After this complicated method of producing the wine, the Sauterne wine is matured in oak casks for 18 to 36 months.
During this time the oak interacts with the wine, resulting in a more mature wine and a fruitier cask, which is good for our whisky later.
Normally whisky is just “finished” in a Sauternes cask, to add a sweetness to the wine, but this whisky has been left for 10 whole years in just a Sauternes cask. This will add an intense and complex sweetness to the whisky, with fruit flavours of apricots and peaches, along with honey and nuts.
The final unusual aspect of this whisky is the use of “peated” spirit. This “peatiness” is a key flavour in many Islay whiskies and formed when the barley is malted by burning peat. The burning of the peat adds phenols to the barley which in turn adds smokey, earthy, salty seaweed flavours to the whisky. The barley used was peated, at 30 “phenol parts per million”, which balanced against the sweet wine, will add a beautiful, extra dimension of flavour. To give you an idea of “how peaty” this will be, it should be much more than a Bruichladdich, Bunnahabhain, Springbank or Ardmore, but much less than the real “peat monsters” like Ardbeg, Laphroaig, Port Charlotte and Lagavulin.
So you can see from the above that this will truly be a unique and special whisky. We will have only one cask available which and we will be selling less than 540, 35cl, numbered bottles at “cask strength”.