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Kilkerran 12 Year

Kilkerran 12 Year

The Glengyle distillery is a story of what can happen to a name in the topsy-turvy history of scotch. The storied Springbank distillery of Campbeltown was founded by Archibald Mitchell, and his two sons took it on after him. The brothers had a falling out eventually. Brother John kept Springbank and William founded Glengyle distillery right down the road in 1872. Like many distilleries in Scotland and Campbeltown, it closed in the 1920s before being reopened after several attempts in 2000 by the great-great nephew of William Mitchell, Hedley Wright, operating under J&A Mitchell and Co, the current owner of Springbank, along with Scotland’s oldest independent bottler, William Cadenhead. The choice of the name Kilkerran comes from the Gaelic Ceann Loch Cille Chiarain, the name of an older settlement on which Campbeltown now stands. It is not called Glengyle, because that name is already in use by a brand of blended Highland scotches and the distillery wanted to avoid confusion. The distillery has released several “works in progress” offerings and only recently has introduced core aged statements, this Kilkerran 12 year and Kilerran 8 year.

Corsair Wildfire

Corsair Wildfire

Since its founding in 2008, Corsair has been making creative spirits on the cutting edge of American craft distilling. In the early years, like many young distilleries, Corsair had to outsource part of the process. Introduced in 2015, the Corsair Wildfire is their first “grain to glass” offering, meaning the distillery handles every part of the production process. The barley is grown on a farm in Tennessee owned by the distillery and is smoked with hickory, a wood often associated with southern BBQ. 

Talisker Dark Storm

Talisker Dark Storm

Released in 2013 as a travel retail exclusive, the Talisker Dark Storm is a direct sibling to the Talisker Storm. The difference here, besides a larger bottle size, is that the casks used to age the whisky are heavily charred. The differences between the regular Storm and this one lead us to wonder if there are any age differences between the two or other factors besides the charring. Because Talisker is operated by Diageo, who are can be very opaque with product details, not many details of any kind are known about the whisky.