Sunday 9 September 2012

Whisky Discovery #158

Longrow 10 Year Old Shiraz Cask (58.9% abv Distilled 19/10/2001)
Campbeltown Single Malt Whisky
You won't find this for sale
Beautiful colour to this Shiraz Casked Longrow experiment
I'm really grateful to David Carson for this sample of a very special 'one of a kind' whisky that he picked up on his recent trip to Cambeltown. I've 'met' David through the wonderful whisky community that is on Twitter, and he is a big fan of the Springbank distillery. You can read the full story 'Been Away Dramlaxing' but in summary:

David stopped off at Cadenhead’s Whisky Shop, which is Scotland’s oldest independent bottler and owned by J & A Mitchell & Co. Ltd, who are incidentally the owners of the Springbank distillery.

The full bottle came from 'the back room' of Cadenhead’s where they sell one of a kind bottles drawn straight from the casks at Springbank distillery. David goes on to say "these really are one of a kind bottles, not 1 of 150 or however many bottles the cask yielded, they have hand written labels, a duty stamp, the top’s sealed and a little tag to say when the sample was drawn and by who. The bottles are priced according to age (with the exception of local barley which is £80), bottles up to 11 year old are £45, 12-15 year old are £60, 16-18 year old goes for £75 and anything older than 19 years old is £100"

Check out David's Glen Untitled blog for his thoughts on this one off whisky, if you haven't come across his blog before you had best put it on your reading list!

So what did I think?

This has a wonderful rich nose, I love a drop of red wine and quite partial to a good Shiraz too. The wine influence is evident in the rich copper colour and the abundance rich vine fruits but the peated barley of the Longrow comes through as a fragrant pipe smoke. On the palate it's very rich and velvet textured, sweet juicy ripe grapes and blackberries. The peaty smoke is still there and a peppery spice too.

The finish is a little drying and there is musty wood flavour, like a wine soak cork. The pepper spice remains with the fragrant pipe smoke wafting through it all.

Wow, this was really more-ish and I could see why David was really pleased with his find! Not sure if we'll ever see something like this again and I wonder what happened to the rest of the cask. I must start my pilgrimage to Campbeltown soon!


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