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.
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.
Stagg Jr. is an uncut and unfiltered barrel proof Kentucky straight bourbon. My bottle is 65.95% and does not indicate a batch number. … There is also no age statement, although the prose on the back states that it has aged “nearly a decade”. The first batch released in 2013 was a vatting of 8 and 9 year-old bourbon. Other Internet sources suggest 7 years, so it’s somewhere between 7 and 9. Stagg shares its “low rye” (under 10% rye) mash bill with Eagle Rare, George T. Stagg, and the eponymous Buffalo Trace bourbon. Stagg Jr. is bottled at barrel proof, which varies from batch to batch.
Springbank 10 is classic stuff. Aged 10 years (It even says it on the bottle! How old-fashioned!), not chill-filtered and bottled at 46% ABV without artificial coloring. Springbank does things the “old way” and is unapologetic about it. On-site floor maltings, worm tubs, and even (some) direct-fired stills. They also do a crazy “2.8-time” distillation and the malt is partially peated. Why? Because that’s how they’ve always done it.