Seven New Scotch Whiskies For Springtime

By Richard Thomas

For Spring 2017, Scotland is delivering a little something for everyone. The seven whiskies that follow include not just offerings for Sherry devotees and Peat lovers, but also whiskies rare and old; using peculiar woods; and made with an eye on Bourbon drinkers.

Ardbeg Kelpie ($140)
The latest from the fan favorite Islay distillery, Ardbeg Kelpie is named for a legendary sea demon and (more importantly) partly matured in an interesting choice of wood stock: casks made of oak harvested from the Russian Black Sea area. Some of the whisky was aged in these Russian oak casks, with the rest being more typical ex-Bourbon barrel stock. This is a Committe-only release, bottled at 51.7% ABV.

Johnnie Walker Blenders Batch Triple Grain American Oak 10 Year Old ($30)
Johnnie Walker Master Blender Dr. Jim Beveridge is a hard-working man, and part of the reason why is the need to create new spins on Walker, still the world’s top selling whisky brand. In this instance, Beveridge has started a new series called Blender’s Batch, and this is the third installation.

Don’t let the name mislead you, however, because it’s not a vatted grain whisky. Beverdige drew on his experience blending Bourbon in Kentucky, but his palette for making Walker Triple Grain included some Mortlach malt as well as grain whiskies made with wheat, (presumably unmalted) barley and corn. These were aged in a mix of new and ex-bourbon American oak. The resulting 10 year old blended whisky was bottled at 41.3% ABV, and unlike the first two Blender’s Batch expressions it is being distributed in the U.S.

Sheep Dip Islay Blended Malt ($35)
This latest iteration of Sheep Dip takes the skill with which that surprisingly good vatted malt was crafted and applies it to, as the name says, Islay malts only. For smokeheads in search of a quality, bargain buy, this is the latest must-have item.

The Last Drop Lochside 1972 ($3,000)
The independent bottlers at The Last Drop bill themselves as “The World’s Most Exclusive Spirits Company,” and they have a good claim to that label. They specialize in casks both rare and old, so much so that their younger releases are in the three decade range, with four decades being more the norm for them and five decades not unheard of.

Case in point is their latest, a Lochside Single Grain distilled in 1972. Lochside was a brewery converted into a grain and malt whisky distillery in 1957. In an interesting twist, it was acquired by the Spanish whisky distillery DYC in 1973, prior to DYC’s own acquisition by Allied Distillers. Lochside was closed in 1992 and demolished in 2004. Dumped and bottled last year for release this year, this is a 44 year old single grain from a long defunct distillery, aged in a second-fill Bourbon cask. The production run yielded only 106 bottles.

The £2,400 ($3,000) price is what the company was asking in the U.K., and what with the Pound Sterling running so low in the exchanges due to Brexit, this is as good a buy as it gets nowadays for a newly released, ultra-aged Scotch whisky in the four figures range.

Tamdhu Batch Strength 002 ($90)
If smokeheads should look to Ardbeg Kelpie or Sheep Dip Islay as their new, must-have items, then lovers of Sherried whiskies should look to this lastest Tamdhu Batch Strength. The essence of this label is to take carefully selected, Sherry cask matured Tamdhu malt and bottle it straight out. The result is a Sherry bomb, and this second installment weighs in at 58.5% abv.

Tomatin Wood And Fire Five Virtues ($65)
Scotch whiskies numbers five and six are two new releases from a new series by Tomatin, the Highland distillery located about 25 miles south of Inverness. Reflecting the Japanese love of whisky, Tomatin is currently owned by the beverage arm of Takara Holdings.

Tomatin’s Five Virtues is a thematic series based on five “elemental” agents: water, wood, earth, fire and metal. Of the first two, Wood was matured in a mix of French, Hungarian and American oak casks, while Fire was matured in “rejuvenated” (read second-fill or higher) casks that were heavily charred.  Each release in this series is classed as a limited edition, and part of a 6,000 bottle run priced at £49.99 a bottle.