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Whisky Advent Day 22 - Glenfarclas 15 Year

Posted on November 30, 2021



There are just 4 whiskies left in the 2016 Kensington Wine Market Whisky Advent Calendar, and when you open Day 22 you'll find the Glenfarclas 15 Year. Glenfarclas 15 has been the distillery's flagship whisky for as long as I can remember, and it is a stalwart release. Massively sherried, much more so than the rest of the range, it is dark spicy and foreboding. A true Speyside sherry bomb. I've forgotten how much so until tonight. But let's dig into the distillery and the Grant family first. The distillery is one of the most interesting in Scotland, and the family no less so!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



 




 








From the Distillery About the Family: “Since 1865 Glenfarclas has been owned and managed by just one family, the Grants of Glenfarclas. On the 8th of June 1865 John Grant acquired the tenancy for the Rechlerich Farm and as part of the transaction purchased the Glenfarclas Distillery for £511.19S.0d. To this day Glenfarclas is one of only a few distilleries in Scotland to remain family owned and managed. Now in the hands of the fifth and sixth generation of the family, the Grants remain committed to the vision of creating the best quality Single Highland Malt Scotch Whisky, in the traditional Speyside style.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 





 

Photo Courtesy of Glenfarclas














From the Distillery About the Whisky: “Glenfarclas is renowned for producing Single Highland Malt Scotch Whisky in the traditional Speyside style, with a heavy Sherry influence. We produce a wide range of expressions from the mouthwatering freshness of the 10 Years Old, to the indulgent 30 Years Old. One of the delights of Glenfarclas is exploring the subtle differences between the different expressions.”


 

Photo courtesy of me... 




The Grant family who owns the Glenfarclas Distillery is in their 5th and 6th generations, with father John and son George currently running the distillery. It is a curious fact that each of the six members of the Grant family to own Glenfarclas have all be named either John or George, beginning with ...

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2016 KWM Whisky Calendar Day 21 - Stronachie 18 Year

Posted on December 5, 2022



Hard to believe it is already Whisky Advent Day 21, time flies when you are having fun... Some of you will likely be familiar with today's whisky, Stronachie 18 Year, but most of you will not. This mystery malt is a bit of a curiosity, an attempt to recreate a lost distillery's style by whisky firm A.D. Rattray. Different incarnations of the whisky have been in the market for the better part of 5-6 years, but it remains a bit under the radar. In addition to this 18 year, there is also a 10-year-old version.



Producer's Words on the History of the Stronachie Distillery "Stronachie Distillery was built by Alexander & MacDonald in the 1890s at the top of a lonely glen close to the Perth/Kinross border. Its high altitude, remote location could only be reached from a rough road which wound through the Ochil mountains. The nearest railway station was 6 miles away at Milnathort and the connecting roads were very poor, becoming almost impassable in winter. This difficulty in transportation led to one of Stronachie’s biggest claims to fame however...



"The distillery initially used a steam traction engine to pull the solid-wheeled trailers containing barrels of spirit down the hill, but this method caused terrible damage to the roads and the locals protested bitterly. The solution was found in the 1920s when a 5 mile narrow-gauge railway was built to connect the distillery to the main rail link at Milnathort. At the time this was the longest private distillery line in Britain. Despite the many challenges faced by Stronachie Distillery it succeeded in producing a fine spirit for around 30 years. During that time Stronachie Single Malt became widely available in and around Glasgow thanks to the successful distribution developed by Andrew Dewar Rattray, a relative of the current owner of A. D. Rattray, Mr S. W. Morrison. However Stronachie was hit in the late 1920s, like many others, by soaring coal and grain prices. It was forced to cease production in 1928 and was dismantled around 1930."



A.D. Rattray enters the picture in 2001 when Stantley Morrison, of Morrison Bowmore fame (he owned the company before selling to Suntory), was researching closed distilleries. He came across a family connection to Stronachie, and shortly thereafter acquired one of just four know remaining bottles of 1904 Stronachie whisky at auction. He then began searching for a distillery who's style most closely emulated Stronachie, and settled on Benrinnes. The Stronachie style is recreated by marrying Benrinnes casks matured in Ex-Bourbon and Ex-Sherry. The whisky is bottled at 46% without artificial colouring.



Originally built as a farm, Benrinnes was rebuilt as a distillery in 1829 following devastating floods. Save for the two world wars the distillery has been in production ever since. The d...

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Whisky Advent Day 20 - Tomatin Cask Strength

Posted on October 25, 2024



The Tomatin distillery sits high in the Highlands of Scotland in the town of the same name. This is no coincidence, the distillery owns the town, and the distillery manager is it’s Mayor! Tomatin is located south of Inverness on a site that was a stopping point for cattle drovers from the north taking their herds to markets in the south. Local lore has it that whisky has been made on the site since the 1400s, with cattlemen stopping to fill their flasks before continuing their arduous journey. Curiously, the distillery’s name translates to “hill of the juniper bush” which may be a clue to the site’s felonius past. Juniper wood was a popular fuel source with illicit distillers as it gives off no smoke!



 

The distillery was built in 1897 in a seemingly isolated spot 1000ft above sea level on the edge of the Monadhliath Mountains. But Tomatin also sits along the rail line connecting Perth with Inverness, and its founders decided to open the Tomatin Spey District Distillery to capitalize on the Victorian Whisky Boom. As I eluded to last night, the timing was poor with the Pattison Whisky Crash bringing the entire Scotch Whisky industry to its knees. Tomatin closed in 1906 with its owners filing for bankruptcy. But where there is crisis there is often opportunity and new owners brought the distillery back on stream just a few years later and it plodded along until 1956 when the stirrings of new whisky boom prompted the owners to double its capacity.

 

 




In 1974 the distillery saw even bigger changes, its production was increased 6 fold further as the demand for Blended Scotch Whisky surged globally. It now had 12 wash and 11 spirit stills, and a capacity of at least 12 million liters, bigger than any current distillery (although that is set to change). The distillery was one of the industry’s most important at the time, and one of the few to bottle their own make as a single malt. But the plans were again overly ambitious, as a producer of bulk malt whisky, the industry’s collapse in the 1980s forced the distillery into liquidation in just a few years. A classic case of the bigger they are, they harder they fall.



Tomatin’s largest market was Japan, and this put Japan’s largest drinks producer Takara Shuzo Ltd. into a tight spot. They banded together with another firm and bought the distillery in 1986, making it the first Japanese owned Scottish distillery. Although Tomatin was still integral to blends like The Antiquarry, which Takara Shuzo also acquired, the focus began to shift to single malts. This change in tact picked up an enormous amount of steam over the last decade. Five...

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Whisky Advent Day 19 - Kavalan Ex-Bourbon Oak 46%

Posted on October 25, 2024



Today's, is one of two whiskies in the 2016 KWM Whisky Advent Calendar, which we are unable to sell. Not because we don't want to, but because there isn't any further stock. Over the course of this year it was announced that Kavalan's 46% range (Ex-Bourbon Oak and Sherry Oak) would be discontinued. But don't be disheartened, the Kavalan Solist Bourbon, the cask strength single cask very of this whisky is still available, and coming on Wednesday. And we think it is even better!



Kavalan Distillery was the vision of Mr. T.T. Lee, the founder of the King Car Group, a large pharmaceutical / agrifoods business. Taiwan is one of the world’s hottest whisky markets, and it only took King Car four years to get the project rolling from concept to distillation. The distillery was built in Yilan province south of Taipei over a 9 month period in 2005. The founders vision was to create a world class single malt whisky in Taiwan, he spared no expense, sought the most respected experts and they achieved their aim in a stunningly short period period of time. It doesn’t hurt that Taiwan’s steaming hot climate supercharges maturation, in just three years they can loose up to a third of a barrel and develop flavours that take 10-18 years in Scotland or Ireland. In 2010, just four years after the whisky first started flowing from Kavalan’s stills, the distillery started racking up awards. This year Whisky Magazine Awarded their Solist Vinho expression World Whisky of the Year.

 




Taiwan is a very mountainous island, it has 286 peaks over 3000m, and a range of rugged mountains separates the distillery from bustling metropolis of Taipei to the north. The drive from Taipei to Yuanshan, the town nearest the distillery, used to take two hours, but a tunnel through the mountains cuts the journey down to an hour. It is a beautiful and easy drive if you are ever in Taipei, and a curiosity if you’ve ever visited a whisky distllery i Scotland. The distillery is named for the indigenous people who once inhabited Yilan’s “Kabalan plain”. The King Car Group built the distillery here because of the plentiful pure waters that flow from Snow Mountain and Central Mountain, but also because of the location’s proximity to Taipei. Kavalan receives over 1,000,000 visitors a year!



Kavalan produces a range of whiskies, but their most sought after are those in the Solist Range, consisting of: Solist Bourbon, Solist Sherry, Solist Vinho (Whisky Magazine World Whisky of the Year) and atop the range Solist Fino. Today we are sampling the Ex-Bourbon Oak 54%, who’s closest approximation is the Solist B...

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2016 KWM Whisky Calendar Day 18 - Glendronach 8 Year The Hielan or ... !

Posted on December 11, 2022



There are just 8 whiskies left in the Kensington Wine Market 2016 Whisky Advent Calendar. There are two different whiskies for Day 18... and as you can imagine there is a story there. If you picked your calendar up before a certain date, you are likely to have BenRiach 10 Year Curiositas. We hadn't planned to include this in this year's Calendar, as it was in last year's. However, there was an issue with the whisky we intended to use, Glendronach 8 Year The Hielan, and we didn't want to hold up the release of our calendars for a month while we waited for it to be released. So if you have BenRiach 10 Year Curiositas, I am going to point you to our post from last year. Click here to read last year's post on BenRiach 10 Year Curiositas. Anyone who received both this and last year's calendar, and who received the BenRiach 10 Year Curiositas in your calendar this year, is welcome to pick up a complimentary Glendronach 8 Year Hielan 50ml from the shop. We have a list of all affected individuals.

 




Back to tonight's planned whisky, Glendronach 8 Year The Hielan. The name "The Hielan", is a reference to the local dialect spoken in the vicinity of the Glendronach Distillery in the Eastern Highlands. The people here are not Celts but the Doric people, and there is a very distinct accent in the area surrounding Aberdeen. These people are sometimes referred to as the Mid Northern Scots or Northeast Scots. The whisky has been matured for 8 years in a mix of Bourbon and Sherry casks, and has been bottled at 46%.



Wind the clock back a decade and Glendronach was a little known Highland distillery. Whisky connoisseurs in the know, knew of that ‘Guid Auld Glendronach” but the brand had been long neglected by its owners, and it was an unknown quantity to your average punter. In 2008 the BenRiach Distillery Co., headed by industry veteran Billy Walker, made a successful bid for the distillery purchasing it from Pernod Ricard. Billy and his consortium (Intra Traing) had previously bought the BenRiach Distillery from Pernod in 2004. With BenRiach Billy and his team wasted no time re-launching the brand, releasing a new core range of single malts including both peated and unpeated expressions. A year later they began putting out single cask bottlings, and BenRiach quickly became one of the Scotch industry’s most talked about producers. So when the BenRiach Distillery Co. announced its purchase of the Glendronach Distillery in 2008, whisky fanatics instantly began salivating.



They didn’t have to wait long for their hopes and dreams to be rewarded. Only months after the takeover in 2009, Glendronach released a new core range of what have proven to be stalwart whiskies: 12, 15 and 18 year olds. The following year they...

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