Single Barrel

Founders Series: Your Land, My Land, Westland

The Founders Series takes advantage of Scotchology’s founders meeting to celebrate our 10th Anniversary in August of 2023. Since we can’t meet in person as often as we were able to when the club first started, we decided to make the most of our time together and sampled a truly broad, exciting range of whiskies in some semblance of batching. The first batch features Westland, an American distillery we have gone to early and often. But a handful of reviews doesn’t quite convey how often we have been there individually or in groups, or how many expressions we have tried and bought for our private collections over the years. This series will expand whenever we gather continue focused explorations of brands or concepts.

By Adam | March 5, 2024 | Musings | No Comments |

Balvenie 15 Year Single Barrel Sherry Cask

This Balvenie 15 year is aged entirely in an ex-Oloroso sherry butt. A butt is a type of cask standard for aging sherry, approximately 475-500 liters. Because of the larger size, there is less surface area per amount of liquid and thus the cask impact is lessened. This may be why this particular offering spends its entire life in the same sherry butt, as opposed to other releases where the sherry cask is used only at the end. Unlike other age statement single malts, which contain a variety of ages with only the youngest listed, this Balvenie is 15 years only, no younger or no older.

By Adam | March 5, 2019 | Speyside | No Comments |

Some distilleries will sell off individual casks, either to producers like Gordon & MacPhail, or to separate parties like liquor stores, who bottle it themselves. Such was the case here, a single barrel from Ace Spirits of Hopkins, MN. Single barrel expressions like this offer a unique expression of the spirit, as each barrel can be slightly different from another due to all the factors that go into the whiskey making process. Normally, Scotchology likes to review whiskies that are generally available and not exceedingly rare or expensive; the thought process being that if you’re interested in what you see in the review, you can go out and get one for yourself. This is not one of those reviews, as the contents of a single cask are quite limiting. Rather, this review can help recommend the choice of seeking out single barrel expressions, and help shed a little light on what one of those barrels from Corsair is like.

By Adam | October 8, 2016 | Foreign | 2 Comments |