Svenska Eldvatten | My Annoying Opinions

This is a somewhat unusual whisky. It is a blend but apparently a single cask blend: what this means is that malt new make and grain new make were blended into a cask upon distillation in 1979 and married in the cask for the entire period of maturation. And this period of maturation was long indeed: 33 years. As to whether the malt and grain components were distilled at the same distillery, I don’t now. If so, that would narrow the source considerably as there are not very many distilleries that are/were set up to distill both malt and grain. It’s also not clear who initiated this single cask blend (a distillery? an independent blender?) or to what purpose. What we do know is that this cask was bottled by Svenska Eldvatten, who have bottled a number of other vintage releases of uncertain origin. The cask is said to be sherry but this release was of only 197 bottles. Given everything else that’s unusual about this it is possible that this was a sherry hogshead. Continue reading →

Bunnahabhain have themselves recently gotten into the peated whisky game with the Toiteach (well, 2008, but it has only just arrived in the US). But a lot of peated Bunnahabhain has been and is available from independent bottlers. Presumably, peated runs were/are made for the group’s blending needs (Bunnahabhain’s production capacity is far higher than that of Tobermory, which is the other distillery in the group that produces peated whisky, under the Ledaig brand name). Indeed, a lot of Bunnahabhain, in general, is available from independent bottlers, and older indie Bunnahabhain, in particular, along with Caol Ila, represents a very good value among the Islay distilleries. That’s neither here nor there, however, as tonight, I am tasting a middle-aged Bunnahabhain from a new Swedish bottler, Svenska Eldvatten, about whom I know nothing other than that they make elegant labels for their bottles*. This is from a peated run and was matured in a first-fill sherry butt.

*But wait, they have a website from which I learn that “Eldvatten” is Swedish for “firewater”. Okay, so they make nice labels and don’t take themselves too seriously. How good are they at cask selection? Let’s take a look:
Continue reading →