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Morris Australian Signature

Morris Australian Signature

Morris of Rutherglen is an Australian winery and distillery located in the northeast of Victoria province. Founded in 1859 by the one of the more prominent winemaking families in Australia, Morris is now run by sixth-generation winemaker Madden Morris. The history of spirit making is slightly shorter at Morris, where a still was installed in 1941 – now nicknamed “Ella”- but lay dormant for decades until being resurrected in the 21st century. The head distiller is Darren Peck, who has been crafting whiskies there since 2015 from local Australian barley and water, and aging them in casks made on site and used to previously hold red and fortified wines from the vineyard. The Morris Australian Sigature is, as the name would imply, their signature expression and anchor of their core offerings.

Kingsbarns Doocot

Kingsbarns Doocot

Kingsbarns was founded in 2014 by Douglas Clement and is currently owned by independent bottler Weymss Malts, which purchased it in 2022. The placement of the distillery in the Lowland region, where there have been remarkably few active distilleries in the 21st century, was purportedly done to help provide comfort to golfers at the nearby famous courses around St. Andrew’s. The first whisky launched in 2018 and after a number of limited in development expressions, a limited core range emerged. The Kingsbarns Doocot is their flagship release and is the Scottish word for the dovecot that sits at the center of the distillery. It is a blend of whiskies matured in (90%) ex-bourbon and (10%) ex-Portuguese red wine barriques that have been shaved, toasted and re-charred (STR), both first-fill.

Teeling Brabazon Series 2

Teeling Brabazon Series 2

While Teeling Distillery was founded in 2015, a quick look at their offerings will show releases carrying much older age statements. This is because when John Teeling sold the Cooley Distillery to  what is now Beam Suntory, one of the stipulations of the sale was the family taking 16,000 casks of whiskey with them. It is from these casks that many of their older bottlings are derived, whiskey essentially sourced from themselves. The Brabazon series from Teeling kicked off in 2017 and was named after William Brabazon, the 3rd Earl of Meath, who oversaw the development of the New Market area in Dublin that would eventually become the Liberties district where the current distillery resides. There have been four entries in this series as of this writing. The Brabazon 2 was bottled in September 2017 and matured in a various sizes of ex-port casks.