The Whiskey Reviewer A World of Whiskey, Poured Every Weekday
Greg and Kristie Dillon, founders of GreatDrams
(Credit: GreatDrams)
Celebrating six years of dramming, this Christmas GreatDrams will be releasing their first Blended Scotch Whisky which will be exclusively available in person at events around Manchester and from GreatDrams.com. Limited to just 150 bottles, the bottle is now available on pre-sale ahead of the official release in mid-September.
GreatDrams expanded to also be in the independently bottled whisky business back in 2018, swiftly winning the Cheshire Drinks Producer of the Year 2019 award just seven months later.
“This marks a new, exciting chapter for GreatDrams as we continue to build the business and its place in the whisky industry. I’m excited that we are able to embark on this latest venture, and look forward to bottling some frankly wonderful whiskies in the coming months and years to come”.
– Greg Dillon, founder of GreatDrams.com.
GreatDrams Ventures, the company behind these releases, is run by husband and wife team, Greg and Kirsty Dillon. Together they select a shortlist of casks they are interested in bottling, sample those casks at various ABVs to ensure that the end product will hold up neat, with mixers and with water and ultimately choose the casks that will be bottled when. Sometimes reracking the whisky into different casks for a period of finishing as part of The GreatDrams Rare Cask Series, as they have done with their 11 Year Old Craigellachie release which recently sold out.
The first single cask whisky release in The GreatDrams Single Cask Series, an 11 Year Old Invergordon Single Grain whisky described by Dillon as “comparable to drinking boozy butter” was bottled at 46.2% ABV, limited to just 160 bottles and sold out within ten weeks.
With luxurious creamy notes of butterscotch, toffee and caramel, this whisky has unparalleled depth for a Single Grain Scotch Whisky, with more flavors developing as you spend time with it.
This new release, being officially released in September, is being released for Christmas 2019, and is the culmination of six months’ development that included many pilot blends, many tasters feeding back their honest opinions through blind tasting sessions.
It has been a wonderful year here at GreatDrams and this whisky is something we are particularly proud of – and happens to be the first blend we have created under our own brand.
Christmas is always a special time of year; fun, frolics, fabulous food and famous memories made together, but also a time to sit back, pour yourself a dram and to reflect on the year that was.
This Blended Cask Series Release is the first Blended Scotch Whisky that we have released. Only one single malt and one single grain whisky went into the final blend giving classic notes of Christmas; a strong fruity sherry note accompanied by the marzipan, zesty fruitcake notes you expect to be surrounded by during a homely Christmas Day around friends and family.
Limited edition of just 150 bottles globally.
Each bottle is hand numbered and can be purchased at GreatDrams.com now or direct from Greg and Kirsty at artisan markets in and around Manchester, England from September.
Dillon added that “we are both really happy with how this whisky have turned out, and that we are able to provide such different flavour profiles to our customers with each release we do. We have a number of fun casks from all sorts of distilleries being matured in a variety of different casks up in Scotland, so keep an eye out for new releases in the coming months…”
