Another official Springbank bottled for K&L in California. This one is from a single refill madeira butt. I bought this because I am a fan of Springbank in general but more particularly because the old Springbank 11, 1997 Madeira Cask (a non-single cask general release) was a favourite before it disappeared. Looking at the colour of the whisky, however, I would guess that the 11 yo had a lot more first-fill madeira casks in the vatting. Either that or this single cask just happens to be from a refill butt that did not impart as much colour: in short, this is not as dark as its younger sibling bottled three years previous. But that’s not terribly interesting information in and of itself. Let’s see what this is like on the nose and palate.
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Continuing with another cask bottled specially for an American retail store, here is a Springbank bottled for K&L, the well-known Californian retailer. I have some quibbles with some of the promotional habits of this store–of which more in a later post–but they do select interesting bottles from time to time. And this is certainly an interesting one, as it’s not always easy to find Springbanks from ex-bourbon casks. The distillery is known for its ex-sherry matured whiskies, and the wood expression series previously released in the US were first a bunch of 12 year olds from different kinds of sherry casks, and a few years later another bunch of 14 year olds from a range of sherry casks. They’ve also released a series of whiskies matured or double matured in other wine casks–claret, madeira, marsala–and even rum and more recently, a calvados cask. They’re a family owned concern and tend to do things their own way–every aspect of the production process is carried out on their premises, where they also produce the Longrow and Hazelburn ranges.  Continue reading →