stats: Single Malt Scotch, Campbeltown, no age statement, 48.4%, $1560*
I’ve been spending a good bit of time on the discussion
forum of straightbourbon.com lately, sometimes participating and other times
just doing research for blog posts. As one would imagine, most of the topics
there revolve around American whiskey. But there’s a decent amount of general
whiskey talk happening there as well.
One recent thread that caught my attention was titled
“Threshold for cracking open a special bottle”. While there were a few people
who noted special occasions such as the birth of a child or a 50th
birthday as the motivation to open one of their most prized bottles, the
general consensus was that merely being in possession of an extraordinary
bottle was reason enough to break the seal.
The group of people represented in that discussion had a few
serious collectors and a few people who never keep more than a few bottles on
hand, but I think most of the participants shared my situation; we buy bottles
faster than we drink them and end up with a collection even though we would not
consider ourselves collectors per se.
In this case it is normal to delay opening a newly acquired
bottle simply because one already has too many open bottles. I find myself
sitting on more and more unopened bottles these days as I try to push through
some of the ones I opened years ago.
I made the point that I’m happy to open a special bottle
anytime without reason, other than the fact that I feel like drinking it, and
if I feel like drinking something exceptional on my birthday I usually have at
least a few special bottles already open.
The whole conversation got me looking over my collection
(the unopened ones anyway) and the standout was the bottle I was given upon
graduating from the Springbank
Whisky School.
It’s been a year since my epic journey to Scotland and I’ve definitely been
feeling nostalgic about the trip lately. In spite of my disinclination to
commemorate significant events by opening special bottles, I decided that it
would perfectly appropriate to crack open my graduation bottle on the one year
anniversary of having received it.
Being the diligent blogger that I am, I committed myself to
getting some background information on the whisky itself. I remember Frank
McHardy (Springbank’s Director of Production) being a little cagey when pressed
for details about the whisky at the graduation ceremony, only noting that it
was a vatting of whiskies ranging from 10 years to 18 years.
I sent an email off to Janet Blair (Springbank’s PR person,
among other duties), and she said she’d look into it. I didn’t hear back for a
few weeks so I sent a follow-up email. She emailed me back with the unfortunate
news that Gavin McLachlan (the Distillery Manager) only
said that it was “special” and wouldn’t give up any details. At her suggestion
I emailed Gavin directly. It’s been about four days now and no response so far.
I have to say that Whisky School
was a wonderful experience, but after receiving a special bottle to commemorate
such a momentous event it is massively disappointing to be unable to elicit
even the most basic of details about the whisky.
Now I’m left to speculate and theorize as to the origins of
the graduation whisky. First I poked around online to see if I could learn
anything. I wasn’t too hopeful as there aren’t many of these bottles out there,
but I did find three Whisky
School bottle images: one
from 2008 at 57.0% abv, one from 2010 where the abv is hard to read but it
looks like it starts with 47 and another from 2012 at 48.4%, the same as the
one I have. So it does appear that they make a unique bottling each year.
48.4% abv, that’s kind of an unusual number. Most of the
official distillery bottlings from Springbank’s standard lineup are at 46%.
They do plenty of single cask bottlings as well, but those are always (as far
as I know) at cask strength, which generally falls in the range of the low 50’s
to the high 50’s. The only recent exception that I noticed was Springbank
Rundlets and Kilderkins (those are small casks, in the 60 liter to 80 liter
range) which was at 49.4%, but that carried an age statement of 10 years, so I
don’t think there is any connection.
One thing I remembered from Whisky School
was that for a normal bottling run a group of casks, maybe up to a dozen, wound
be dumped into a large tank and enough water adding to bring it down to roughly
48% abv. After a good mixing it is put back into casks to rest, but not the
same ones. The whisky now resides in very old casks that have been used for
many years and will simply act as neutral vessels. This step lasts somewhere in
the range of a few weeks to a few months and allows all of the flavors to meld
together ensuring a consistent product. Bigger operations have a large number
of tanks so the whisky can stay in one until it is ready for bottling, there
are no such luxuries at Springbank.
The group mingled of casks will be brought back out to the
bottling hall when they are ready and dumped into another tank. Now precise measurements
will be taken and water added to bring the whisky down to 46% abv before it
makes its way into the bottles. It is done this way because most of the water
needs to be added before the resting stage, but the abv may change once it is
back in casks, so they leave a little water to be added at the end. This is
when the abv number has to be accurate; there are government mandated
regulations that give little tolerance between the actual percentage of alcohol
and that which is listed on the label.
But these bottling runs are usually for a set number of
cases and the amount of whisky coming out of the group of casks that were
pulled is unlikely to match up. We were told that the excess whisky from a run
would go back in a cask and be held for the next run of the same type of
whisky. I actually don’t remember if that surplus whisky was set aside when it
was at exactly 46% or at 48-ish percent, but the 48.4% abv of my bottle got me
to thinking; maybe this is the extra whisky from a group of casks that had gone
through the resting phase.
The most likely candidate would be Springbank CV, as it is
already a vatting of several cask types and ages. Luckily I have a bottle of
Springbank CV to compare. But there was no need to even open it, the colors are
so dramatically different (the CV is light the graduation whisky is very dark)
that there is no way they are of the same ilk.
As I pored over online databases of Springbank single malt
bottlings looking for clues I noticed a few things. The distillery puts out a
lot more single cask bottlings than I realized. A quartet of 14 year old
Springbanks, each from a different type of sherry cask, came to the U.S.
this year. There are several single cask Springbank Society bottlings each
year. I’ve seen a 2009 Amontillado Sherry butt bottle on a store shelf. I also
found reference to a 13 year old single bourbon barrel bottling that was
exclusive to the Belgian market. Oh, and K&L wines in California recently had a Springbank Madeira
cask bottled just for them. Those are just a few examples.
As I was looking through all of the information, I realized
that the single cask bottlings that had production quantities listed were all in
multiple of 6. This makes sense; most whisky is packaged in cases of six
bottles. These cases are neatly packed on palates for shipping. They are not going
to send out 50 cases and two loose bottles.
So, that brought me to my final theory. There must be some
leftover whisky from each single cask bottling, could the Whisky School
bottling be a bunch of “leftovers” all vatted together? Well, I’ll have to work
through some math to see if this is even reasonable. There were 10 sessions of
school in 2012, each with six students. That means there were 60 bottles, each
at 48.4% abv. All of the single cask Springbanks seem to be at cask strength,
typically between 50% and 60%, so I’m going to say they are at 55% on average.
60 bottles at 70cl each equals 42 liters total. Multiply
that by .484 and we get 20.328 liters of alcohol. If there are 20.328 liters of
alcohol in a volume of whisky at 55% abv, that works out to 36.96 liters of
whisky (20.328 x 100 ÷ 55). This shows that if they had 36.96 liters of
“leftover” cask strength whisky at 55% abv and they added enough water to bring
the abv down to 48.4%, it would yield 60 bottles.
Since everything seems to go out in six bottle cases, it
stands to reason that the remaining whisky from a single cask bottling would be
somewhere between zero and six bottles, so 3 bottles on average, which is 2.1
liters. 39.96 liters divided by 2.1 liters per bottling run gives us 17.6 runs.
Rounding up, you would need the excess whisky from 18 single cask bottling runs
to for this to work out. Given my research, that seems like a reasonable number
of single cask bottlings for Springbank to put out in a year.
The majority of their single cask offerings come from casks
that previously held sherry, port, Madeira,
red wine, etc. That would explain the exceptionally dark color of this whisky.
Of course this is all just a hypothesis based on my observations and I could be
completely wrong. Either way, it’s time to stop thinking and start drinking.
* You may have noticed the star next to the price of this
bottle up top. The only way to get one is to attend the Whisky School,
so that price includes tuition, lodging and three meals a day for five days.
The color is a dark golden amber. The nose is fairly unique.
It has a typical Springbank characteristic, but there is something more to it.
I find the aromas to be approachable yet intriguing; they carry a certain
breadth and density. The liquid is fairly viscous on the tongue. It almost
seems meek right up front, but the flavors and intensity build quickly.
A lot of dark flavors are in the mix: raisins, dried figs and
molasses to name a few. This range integrates nicely with the underlying fruit
notes and dry spiciness that builds as it moves into the lengthy finish. The
peat smoke that is a normal (although not major) contributor to the Springbank
flavor profile is very restrained in this example. The whisky is well behaved,
with smooth transitions and no off-notes; a complex single malt that begs
contemplation (I think I have more than obliged).
Gavin is right, it is special; I just wish someone would
tell me what it is that makes it so special. I imagine that anyone who is
willing to travel great distances and make the effort to see the innermost
workings of their favorite distillery would feel the same way.
1 comment:
I'm going to Whisky School next week, I'll be there for Open Day. I'll try to remember to run your theory by Gavin/Frank. Good detective work!
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