Single casks tasting vs. warehouse tasting

TL;DR: Second day of the Edinburgh Whisky Group Speycation! In the morning, we headed to Aberlour distillery where we split into two groups for a single casks tasting. In the afternoon, we went to the (dismissed) Coleburn distillery for a warehouse tasting with Murray & McDavid. We ended the evening at the Windswept brewery, in Lossiemouth, enjoying pints, music, and good company.

(missed Part 1?)

We woke up quite rested on the Friday morning. The day looked very interesting: a tasting at an already known distillery, followed by a warehouse tasting (as we said a few times, always our favourite) and a visit to a brewery…Not bad, eh?

We had a quick breakfast in the room with some food bought the day before. The alternative was a heavy breakfast at the near Brewers Fayre, but we left it for another day, considering we wouldn’t workout nor run for four days, as we are used to. For this and the next couple of days Justine had arranged a bus: Speyside is a big area to cover, and of course if we used our vehicles, at least 5 of us couldn’t have enjoyed the drams along with the others, defeating the purpose of the trip. There weren’t many others options, as public transport in the area is…ehm…(euphemism alert) not the best? And with cabs it would have been way more expensive. The company sent us a young driver, Lyndsay, which was super nice and it turned out she was a whisky fan too (must have been a torture to watch over 20 people getting pished for three days and not being able to have a sip!).

The first visit of the morning was at a distillery we already knew, Aberlour, but that we have overlooked since our visit in 2019, except for a bottle of A’Bunadh which for a while was our “Teresa’s mother house dram”. Reasons being, their other core releases are a bit dull in our opinion, and there are not many independently bottled. The distillery, however, offers many single cask bottlings (the Distillery Collection). This is a feature of all distilleries owned by Chivas Brothers/Pernod Ricard (Glenlivet, Scapa and Strathisla): they have many bottlings from the distillery and sometimes from the others. Only down side: they are 50cl bottles priced like 70cl ones. We personally have nothing against smaller bottles – we like exploring, so smaller bottles allows us to get more variety, in theory a win-win. However, in some cases (included this) we feel like they are just an excuse to sell less at a higher price.

The group had to split in two because they couldn’t accommodate us all at the same time, and we happened to be in the second, so as usual when we are in Aberlour, we had a coffee and a snack at the Gather’n café. Back at the distillery, we were welcomed in a very nice tasting room overlooking the distillery, some of us on chairs, some of us on comfy sofas.

The four drams were in front of us, as well as a small gift: a set of three branded black glasses, very useful for blind tastings. Gianluigi was super happy, Teresa not so much (you have to know that Teresa thinks we have too many whisky glasses in the house and she’s not too keen on more, but no worries Aberlour, you made at least one of us super happy!). The tasting was hosted by Shirley (that’s her name, if memory serves us well!), initially a bit shy, but ultimately very funny and knowledgeable (also, with a family heritage in the whisky industry). The first dram was a 10y from a first fill ex-sherry butt. It was cask strength (CS, 58.3%), of course not-chill filtered (NCF) and not artificially coloured (NCF), like all the drams. It was followed by a delicious 18y from a 2^nd fill (probably ex-bourbon) hogshead (51.6%), a 17y from a first fill ex-sherry butt (58.5%), and finally a quite nice 21y from a 2^nd fill ex-sherry butt (58.9%). A good reminder about how delicious Aberlour can be.

We came out from the distillery quite satisfied, had lunch at a nice café nearby, and after a bit the bus picked us up in the village. The next stop was the now not operational distillery of Coleburn, on the road between Rothes and Elgin. The former distillery’s warehouse is now used by the good folks at Murray McDavid (independent bottler) to store some of their casks. So of course, we were going to do a warehouse tasting, hurray! This is the same type of experience they offer during the Spirit of Speyside festival (by the way, if you look at the picture on the festival webpage, that’s us in the photo in the orange vests!).

So, we spent the following hour and a half wondering around the warehouse, stopping in front of certain casks where Dan and Steve would get some whisky and fill our glasses with a mighty valinch, and happily drinking the drams. First off, a young Caol Ila (about 5y), followed by an old Allt’A-Bhaine, 22y, finished in an octave from Koval distillery. They have a great relationship with this producer from Chicago, and we could see many of their octave casks lying around. After another bit of wandering, we had the third dram, a magnificent Glentauchers from a wine cask (continuing the series of “no” answer to the question “have you ever had a bad Glentauchers?”). Finally, a Glenburgie from a sherry cask (oloroso? We don’t remember exactly), another tasty dram, albeit the winner for both of us was the third one.

Unfortunately, they had no shop on site, so we returned the vests and jumped back on the bus, this time heading to the Windswept Brewery in Lossiemouth. The day was nice, so instead of going straight inside, a small group of us decided to walk to the nearby beach. It was a very nice and relaxed stroll, and at the beach we could see the anti-landing concrete blocks from WWII.

Back at the brewery, we had a couple of nice pints and a not-so-good meal from a local burger joint (won’t name names here, but someone told us they have closed). Spending the evening chit-chatting inside, we realised too late that there was a band playing outside…ouch! Overall, it was a nice close to a very nice day, and we went back to the hotel in Elgin very happy!

Aberlour Single Casks Explored tasting

Price: £40.00 pp (October 2022)

Duration: 1hr

Tasting: 4 drams, all CS, NCF and NC: 10y from a first fill ex-sherry butt (58.3%), 18y from a 2^nd fill (probably ex-bourbon) hogshead (51.6%), 17y from a first fill ex-sherry butt (58.5%), and 21y from a 2^nd fill ex-sherry butt (58.9%), plus three black copitas

Target: Whisky enthusiasts

Value for money: Good

Distillery Exclusive: Most single casks Aberlour bottlings

Recommended: if curious to try non-standard Aberlour’s

Link: https://www.maltwhiskydistilleries.com/aberlour/

Murray McDavid warehouse tasting

Link: https://murray-mcdavid.com/

(No summary because this was a bespoke experience)

A visit to Scapa distillery

TL; DR: We were finally able to visit Orkney and its malt distilleries. First off, Scapa, home of quite a “mysterious” single malt, that we learned to appreciate during an in-depth distillery tour and a great tasting of mostly single cask expressions. Definitely a must-go for whisky fans visiting Orkney!

In summer 2021, we had carefully planned a trip to the North of Scotland, including a few days on Orkney, which we were very eager to visit. For various reasons (actually, one reason, guess which one!) we had to cancel it. The occasion to catch up presented itself this year thanks to a couple of friends from Parma, Roberto and Cecilia (and their wee one, Flora). They wanted to visit the Highlands since their first visit in 2019, but things happened in between. This year they finally made it, and halfway into their holiday we joined them in Inverness and continued together: direction, Orkney!

We travelled in a campervan, which was meant to be an adventure. It was indeed, although with way more midges than expected: that was our first unfortunate discovery of the holiday: the Northeast coast is full of midges, almost as much as in the West, at least around Thurso where we spent the first night.

On the way to Thurso, where midges were waiting for us!

We woke up early however, and not for the midges, our ferry from Thurso to Stromness was around 8am. The cafe on the boat had a very Scottish menu, which meant a roll-based second breakfast. The view was quite spectacular, in particular we could admire the Old Man of Hoy during the cross.

Once on the island, we explored the village of Stromness. It looked like a very peaceful place, and not overwhelmingly touristy. After the stroll we had a quick lunch in a cafe and drove towards East, direction Orphir, where we stopped for a walk to the beach, taking advantage of the nice weather. On the beach we found half a jaw of some animal…cow? Sheep? Seal? And, more worrying, some dead birds, likely because of avian influenza. This wasn’t the only time during the holiday, it happened later at the Brough of Birsay and at Dingyshowe beaches.

Moving on, it was finally time for our first visit to an Orcadian distillery, Scapa, right outside the “capital”, Kirkwall! Before the tour, Scapa was quite a “mysterious” single malt to us: until then, we were only aware of two official bottlings, the Skiren and the Glansa, the latter finished in ex-peated casks (since the distillery belongs to Chivas Brothers, we guess Allt-A Bhainne). We also never came across an expression from independent bottlers (the SMWS has a code for Scapa, #17, but as far as we know no recent bottlings).

Our friends dropped us at the visitor centre, where the tour guide Maria Letizia warmly welcomed us. Because she is Italian, she gave us a personalised tour in Italian, the very first time for us! The distillery is going through some renovations. They’re building a new tasting room, making sure it’s not pointing towards a certain buoy in the Scapa Flow. Maria Letizia explained that this is a sign of respect, because that’s the place where the Royal Oak, a ship with about 800 novices in training, mostly teenagers, was sunk by a German submarine during WW2, which was lucky enough to get to the Flow avoiding all old ships positioned as hurdles.

After this quite sad historical anecdote, the tour moved on as usual: we got told the history of the distillery, which was founded in 1885, and partially destroyed in 1919 by a fire. More recently, in 1994, it was mothballed and for a few years, personnel from the neighbouring Highland Park were turning it on for a few weeks every year to make sure that everything was still working. They get all the malted barley from the mainland, totally unpeated, and that was from the foundation in our understanding, which is very uncommon for an Island distillery. Unfortunately, we couldn’t take any photos in the production area, so we cannot show you a very peculiar detail: their wash still is a Lomond still, similar to the Ugly Betty at Bruichladdich (which is used for gin, however). They also don’t have any filling station, so the newmake spirit is stored into tankers and transported to Glasgow to be put in casks, at 63.5% if first-fill casks, while at a higher strength, 68.8%, if refills. Some of these return back to the island, together with casks from other Chivas’ distilleries, to mature on site. We could take a sneak peek at the warehouses, but photos from the outside only.

Back to the visitor centre, everything was ready for the tasting. When we booked the tour (which alone was 5 quids only!!!), we could choose three tastings: the Land (a core range expression and 3 from the 10-16y range, £30), the Sea (four drams from the 15-19y range, £35) and the Air (four drams from the above 20y range, £45). These tastings were not bookable from the website, which only offers 3 unspecified drams for£25, we had learned about them by contacting the distillery via email. Except for the two core range expressions, all the other ones are available as 50cl bottles, as is typical of Chivas Brothers’ distilleries. Like the ones we saw in the other distilleries, they are a bit pricey too – company policy.

We chose the fancier ones, Sea and Air, although in the first one we decided to include two drams below 15y (more approachable price-wise). All very tasty drams, in particular a couple of sherry cask matured ones (very cask forward, though). In general, we found the distillery character very citrusy, oily, crispy and honey/vanilla forward. They were all single casks, except an 18y, a marriage of 5 ex-bourbon barrels from the small production of 2000, when the distillery was run for a few days by Highland Park operators.

We were very happy to finally get to know this distillery and its character. After dinner, we tried the two core range expressions, Skiren and Glansa, which we had tasted a long time before. Quite inoffensive sweet drams, definitely not comparable with the juicy and tasty ones we had had earlier at the distillery. Just a shame Chivas don’t bottle more geek-forward expressions at a reasonable price (don’t have to be all single casks, btw).

The night ended at the Kirkwall camping, trying to avoid the midges. Stay tuned for the second and last part of this trip!

Scapa Tour and Tasting

Price: £5 tour (August 2022) + tasting (£25 3 drams, bookable online in the summer season; £30 Land 1 dram from the core range and 3 distillery bottlings 10-16y; £35 Sea 4 distillery bottlings 15-19y; £45 Air 4 distillery bottlings 20+y)

Duration: 1-1.5 hours

Tasting: depending on tasting choice and available expressions

Target: anyone really, the experience can be easily customised

Value for money: very good

Highlights: the still room and the Lomond still

Recommended: YES!

Link: https://www.scapawhisky.com/

Tag: Pernod Ricard

#27.2 Speycation

Single casks tasting vs. warehouse tasting

#19.1 Dramming around Orkney

A visit to Scapa distillery