Glenmorangie

Glenmorangie Bacalta is the 8th bottle in the Private Edition range of single malts. This one looks to me to be picking up where an older Glenmorangie - the discontinued Madeira Wood Finish - left off.  Bacalta started its life in ex-Bourbon casks, before being transferred into Malmsey Madeira casks for a finishing period.

Glenmorangie's 'signet' - their logo - is inspired by the lower panel of the 9th Century 'Hilton of Cadboll Stone' a pict cross-slab originally located on the east coast of Easter Ross. The signet section of the stone is believed to symbolise the Pictish belief in the interconnectivity of earth, fire and water. Glenmorangie’s 'Signet' whisky, released in 2011 is designed to highlight their take on the engraving – ‘refined complexity’.

Glenmorangie’s annual Private Edition bottles has always been where spirit and wood experimentation intersect, resulting in some unique and oft-times tasty whiskies. 2018’s edition is no different. With the release of Spios (Gaelic for ‘spice’), Glenmorangie are doing something which I believe is a first – taking American ex-rye casks, and using them to full-term mature their single malt. You may have seen a few examples of rye finished whisky (Johnnie Walkers Blenders’ Batch springs to mind) where the liquid has been re-racked (usually from ex-bourbon) for a period of some months,  but Glenmorangie’s 9^th Private Edition bottling takes the rye and puts it front and central by wholly maturing all the whisky in ex-rye casks.

Sitting at the entry point for Glenmorangie’s ‘Prestige expressions’, the 18 year old Extremely Rare is composed of two main components -  15 year old ex-bourbon from American white oak, and 18 year old that has been moved from ex-bourbon into oloroso sherry casks (around 30% of the total) for a further three years of maturation. The two are then married back together again and bottled at 43% ABV. Oh, and it's quite commonplace rather than extremely rare.

Age takes time. Maturity takes work. An overused phase often thrown in the general direction of stroppy teenagers, but one which still has some truth in it. Likely you’ve been in this situation – presented with a 20+ year age statement, but confounded by the aromas and flavours which feel like they lack the maturity you’d expect from such an aged expression. Tired, overused casks perhaps? Or just personal choice? In my head I have a fairly well prescribed selection of aroma and flavour cues which I associate with maturity. But, they’re exactly that - personal –based on my tastes and perceptions. It turns out its far from easy to agree what maturity is.

Over to Tain for sherry hogshead that’s been matured for 17 years and has produced 198 bottles at 57.1%. Bottles still available for £89.95 from The Whisky Shop Dufftown.

Released earlier in the year, Sponge’s ‘unblended highland single malt’ has been matured in a refill hogshead for 35 year before being bottled at 46.1% ABV. 232 bottles were produced from this unnamed, but oh so heavily hinted at distillery.

The official rules surrounding the clasification of teaspooned malts seems to me to be largely nonsensical. Adding a tiny amount of whisky from one distillery to a cask from another distillery means it is no longer 100% one thing or another – and technically now a blended malt. But, if you think about it, any whisky that’s come from a refilled cask is going to contain elements of its precursor liquid. On the one hand we have distilleries dumping whole bottles of sherry into tired casks to ‘season’ them, and still being able to label and sell the result as a single malt. On the other, adding a few centilitres of liquid from a neighbouring distillery means the whisky is now legally a different thing altogether. But, of these two examples which do you think will have changed the underlying profile of the whisky the most?