Sheep Dip – the whisky – by Spencerfield Spirits (now owned by Ian Macleod Distillers Limited) is a blend of 16 single malt whiskies purportedly between the ages of 8 and 20 (although there is no “8” on the bottle) all aged in first-fill ex-bourbon casks. Famed blender Richard “The Nose” Paterson is said to be behind or involved in the blending. …
Smooth Ambler Old Scout not only has an awkward name, it has an awkward composition: A “union” of two sourced American whiskeys blended in “hand-selected batches” that prevents the whiskey from being labelled as Bourbon. The first whiskey is an MGP-distilled 36% rye (“high-rye”) 9 year-old bourbon. The second is a Tennessee-distilled whiskey made from a bourbon mash which is aged for 5 years in re-charred used ex-bourbon barrels.
There is a wild raging debate on the Internet about the actual source of Alexander Murray & Co.’s big-age, low-price malts. Some rumors suggest that the majority of the company’s barrels come from Tullibardine (a whisky chameleon of sorts), while the company has definitely bottled Macallan before, and is reported to have contracts with both Diageo and Edrington.
…his experiments resulted in the founding of Copper Fox Distillery in Sperryville, Virginia. Copper Fox not only has its own maltings – a rarity for any distillery in the world, even Scotland – but also malts 100% of its own barley. The barley is a 6-row hybrid grown locally and is smoked (“gently”) using fruitwood smoke (apple and cherry wood)…
Of course this is discontinued, I would buy more if it weren’t. Similar in a lot of ways to Bank Note 5 year, but with more finesse and more sweetness. Your best bet to find a replacement is to actually look at Monkey Shoulder, which has the same Grant’s-owned malt components without the grain.
…and sometimes you’re the bug. This is what my wife tells our four year-old to avoid tantrums when he loses at Candy Land. It’s also apropos for life. Sometimes I get a blog post written and posted before the end of the weekend, and sometimes I just don’t. This week, I’m the bug. Drink some …
To be fair, these are wheat-recipe bourbons made by Buffalo Trace (where modern Pappy is also produced) and matured in the same warehouses. In my W. L. Weller 12-year review, I refer to Weller bottlings as “failed Pappy” which may or may not be blogger poetic license.
Wolfburn Aurora was released in 2016 from 3 year-old Wolfburn malt aged in a variety of casks. Reportedly, this means 40% of the whisky was aged in second-fill quarter casks, 40% in first-fill ex-bourbon barrels, and the remaining 20% in first-fill Oloroso sherry hogsheads.
The Single Malt from Teeling is a vatting of 5 (or more) difference Irish single malt whiskies of different ages, consisting of whisky aged in – get this – Sherry, Port, Madeira, White Burgundy, and Cabernet Sauvignon. Apparently one of the barrels was filled in 1991 (age approximately 23 years at time of bottling), although I’d guess the rest are in the “slightly under 10” category.
The Glendullan distillery is yet another one of those industrial factories that Diageo uses to spit out tens of thousands of liters of whisky every year, almost all of which goes into blends. There have been both official and independent bottlings of Glendullan for a long time, but they haven’t been marketed or distributed with much effort, nor received much attention.