Redbreast Lustau Edition
Relationships matter, both in your personal life and in the world of spirits. Because of an old friendship, Midleton distillery’s Redbreast brand was able to source casks directly from the famous Bodegas Lustau, out of the city of Jerez in the Andalusian region of Spain. The whiskey in the Redbreast Lustau Edition is aged between 9-12 years in a mix of bourbon and sherry casks (much like the Redbreast 12) before being finished for one further year in Oloroso sherry casks from the winery.
Balvenie 15 Year Single Barrel Sherry Cask
This Balvenie 15 year is aged entirely in an ex-Oloroso sherry butt. A butt is a type of cask standard for aging sherry, approximately 475-500 liters. Because of the larger size, there is less surface area per amount of liquid and thus the cask impact is lessened. This may be why this particular offering spends its entire life in the same sherry butt, as opposed to other releases where the sherry cask is used only at the end. Unlike other age statement single malts, which contain a variety of ages with only the youngest listed, this Balvenie is 15 years only, no younger or no older.
SnapShot: Whiskyfabric Whirlwind 1
This series of SnapShot posts derives from whisky exchanges people known as the Whiskyfabric, a term created by Canadian whisky writer Johanne McInnis, otherwise known as the Whisky Lassie, to encompass the online community of whisky writers, creators, reviewers and enthusiasts that exist on social media. And sometimes the connections made online can spill offline. Over the past couple of years, we here at Scotchology have exchanged whiskies via mail with a number of folks across the United States and Canada, and finally decided to sit down to taste the bounty in one fell swoop. Or several swoops, because there was really a lot of whisky! We’ve done a rough grouping and this post contains various non-Islay scotches: Speyside, Highland, Lowland and Campbeltown malts. Islay scotches and other world whiskies get their own posts.