Longrow Red 15 Year Pinot Noir
Springbank is one of the most storied distilleries in Scotland, a land rife with history and legends centered around whisky. The history of scotch in general has seen a number of boom and bust cycles and Springbank is one of the few survivors in Campbeltown of a particularly strong bust cycle of when there were upwards of 30 distilleries in this town of a few thousand on the eastern side of the Kintyre peninsula that faces the Isle of Arran and is only separated from Northern Ireland by a little over ten miles of open water. One of the three current major brands of Springbank is Longrow, named after another lost Campbeltown distillery, and is their peated single malt that is twice distilled. The Longrow Red series is a yearly release bottled at cask strength. No two years are the same, as a different type of red wine cask is used to mature the whisky, whether or not any kind of finish is used. This Longrow Red 15 Year was finished in fresh Pinot Noir casks from New Zealand for four years after 11 years in ex-bourbon barrels.
Sonoma Cherrywood Rye
Sonoma Distilling was founded in 2010 by Adam Spiegel and was the first located in a region of California more renowned for wine than spirits. As with many other distillers, Sonoma looks to local elements and promotes grain-to-glass production at their facility. Even the grains themselves are from the surrounding states. At least it is now. When the distillery was younger, some of the releases included grain from other locations, including this one with part of the rye content sourced from Canada. The Sonoma Cherrywood Rye is part of the distillery’s portfolio that takes their existing spirit – bourbon and rye so far – and smokes the malted barley that makes up a tenth of the mashbill with cherrywood.
Laphroaig Cairdeas 2020 Port & Wine
The first Laphroaig Cairdeas (“friendship” in Gaelic) came out in 2008 and has been an annual release since then. The 2020 Cairdeas Port & Wine represents a way to introduce wine finishes to a smoky scotch, something that is not always successful given the strong elements of a typical Laphroaig. To solve this, part of the initial maturation was done in ex-bourbon casks and part in second-fill ruby Port barriques. These are then combined to finish in red wine casks. Specifics about the time spent in each process is not available but that is relatively common in No Age Statement whiskies.