Springbank Private Bottling for Distillery Visitors 2017

So I just drank a £50 dram.

Which is more a reflection of the weird state of Scotch in 2017 than of the true value of this whisky.

But that's not the reason for this post, ho no missus. Nope. I'm writing this because Springbank seems to provoke logorrhea in a way that other drams don't. Look at this:

Can you tell that I really liked this whisky?

Here's the transcription, for those of you using Lynx or another text-only browser.

Nose: malt and iron. age-patina-ed old iron and brown sugar. If you took a handful of long grass (forage, destined to be hay) and held it tight to an old horseshoe until it had become damp. That. Grubby small children, but your own, beloved children, not anyone else's. Faintly, a curry spice (cumin?)

Palate: Sweet and malty, but somehow suggesting sweeties made from seaweed. A salty-sweet finish. Sweet round malt, beautiful brown sugar (muscovado, the darkest of sugars). Oh, and sherry.

Conclusion: the perfect dram for my mood tonight. A great Springbank.

I absolutely love it when this happens. To be honest, this is why I drink. I don't care for the other effects of alcohol, the drunken-ness or the hangover, but when the booze provokes me into wordiness, oh man, I'm so happy. I don't mind that these words likely don't mean much to most of you. The process of turning ethanol-plus-congeners into letters on a screen makes me unreasonably happy.

PS If you haven't already arrived at this conclusion, then let me say that the take-away from this blog post is that you need to get yourself to Campbeltown and do the tour, just so you can have the whisky.

Terroir, again.

I keep having the same sort of argument with different people about terroir and whisky, most recently with @maltreview and @WhiskyPilgrim. Since Twitter doesn't lend itself well to lengthy exposition, here's a blog post instead.

The notion of terroir is deeply bound up with wine, and with France. The word itself is French, although my copy of Hachette unhelpfully translates it as "land". The Oxford Companion to Wine offers the slightly more useful "total natural environment of any viticultural site". The Companion then goes on for some two or three thousand closely spaced words which—and I hope my twitter antagonists can agree—don't really serve to settle the matter definitively.

But I think all sides can agree that a terroir wine has flavours unique to the place where its grapes were grown and where it was made.

How, then, does this idea transpose into Scotch whisky? I would argue that it doesn't.

We can straight away disregard the hundred plus distilleries who buy their malt from Crisps or Bairds or whatever, since that barley is sourced from all over the UK and beyond. For them, there can not be the total natural environment of the triticultural site. Their barley is not site specific.

But even when we look at Springbank or Bruichladdich or Ballindalloch, the idea of a flavour unique to the place where the barley is grown does not stand up to any sort of scrutiny.

That's because the analogy with winemaking is just that, an analogy - and a poor one at that. Wine is the all but inevitable consequence of not drinking the grape juice, of leaving the juice to rot. Humans need do little more than pick and press the grapes and something wonderful (or at least drinkable) will result. Whereas whisky is the end result of a multi stage process, with each stage contributing flavours. The human element is far more important than in wine making.

From the peating level of the malt to the length of fermentation to the shape of the stills to how the stills are run to the choice of casks, all these human choices contribute much more than the place where the barley is grown.

We see this in the resulting product. Yes, Bruichladdich's Islay barley bottlings are slightly different from their Scottish barley expressions - but they are unmistakeably, first and foremost, Laddies. And Springbank's Local Barley bottlings differ from other Springers of similar age and cask type, but they are most definitely Springbank.

By contrast, were Laphroaig to take barley from Rockside farm and turn it into whisky according to the Laphroaig method and procedure, which would it more resemble, Laphroaig 10 or Bruichladdich Islay Barley?

The unvoiced answer to this rhetorical question is why we talk about distillery character and not barley field character. Whisky terroir does not exist.

An Unfair Comparison

In the middle of a Twitter tasting organised by Steve Rush for the Lakes Distillery I found myself, slightly to my surprise, thinking of Campbeltown.

The whisky on tasting was a tawny port cask finished version of The One, which is a British whisky blended with spirit from across the UK, and there was about it a faint but distinct air of tarry rope, or coal tar soap, or some such. In other words, Eau de Kintyre.

Having enjoyed it, I thought I would finish off my sample in comparing it with the genuine article, in the shape of Springbank 12 Year Old Cask Strength.

I know, I know, it's a completely unfair comparison. One of these is a blended whisky, and very likely with a component average age of not much more than three, while the other is a full strength malt from the most old school distillery of them all (and regarded by many folk as the best of distilleries). Nevertheless, dear reader, compare them I did.

The very act of making the comparison seemed to change the blend. The smoke went from being tarry to a sort of damp earthy burnt wood - still pleasant, but less impressive than previously. On the other hand the red fruit notes were still there, a tasty distilled version of the sort of jam used to fill doughnuts. Yep, still a decent blend.

But, alas, no match for the Springbank. Next to the blend it seemed a complex, slightly argumentative dram, with very faint smoke, a sour-sweaty-farmyard note right next to the most refined feminine perfume, dry maltiness, and the faint shadows of other flavours beyond those (is that marzipan? Next to the frangipane? I can't be sure).

So, well done to the Lakes distillery for a really interesting blend, and well done again for managing to invite comparison with Springbank. And now I'm away for another glass of Springbank.

Tasting Note: Springbank 15 Year Old Rum Cask

I tasted this at the end of a brilliant evening of whiskies and sherries, so my notes may be slightly more euphoric than is strictly justified.

Whiskybroker Springbank 15yo Rum barrel #300 52.8%

The nose is light and smoky. Perhaps brown sugar? It's sweet, but sweet without being syrupy - it is noticeably light in body. Fresh and maybe a wee bit salty.

With some water it becomes distinctly metallic; iron (which I often find in whiskies from Campbeltown) and aluminium. I should explain that when I find iron in a whisky that's a good thing, whereas aluminium is nearly always a bad thing.

The palate is very light and sweet. There's that lovely Campbeltown smoke in the finish. Just delicious.

Adding water doesn't change the palate so much. It remains soft, rounded, and smoky. Perhaps a little peppery note creeps in.

Conclusion: This is just ace. I'm a Springer fan, but even if you're not I think you'd find this to be a superb whisky. I'm not sure how much sweetness the rum barrel added, but it was certainly a good cask.

Tasting Note: Longrow CV

nose: very smoky, peaty, and mealy (like porridge, I suppose). Sweet like treacle toffee. There are tangy or sharp undertones. Over time, a popcorn note emerges.
palate: there is an oily, thick texture, with loads of smoked salt. But there's also a strong fruitiness - melon and banana, plus fudge. It's a full bodied dram for sure.

Conclusion

I like this very much indeed, and it looks like very good value for money too, at about £30. Excellent.

About Longrow

Springbank distillery, one of three in Campbeltown, makes three different malt whiskies, Hazelburn, Springbank, and Longrow. It gives them different names, perhaps to help consumers, perhaps as an aide memoire for the distillers, perhaps to keep alive the memory of long-lost Campeltown distilleries. Longrow is distinguished by its heavy peating level and the fact that it is straightforwardly double distilled. "CV" is generally explained as either "Chairman's Vatting" or "Curriculum Vitae", depending on who you ask.