FIRST APPEARANCE FROM THIS DISTILLERY FOR SMWS CANADA

Bottled for the Lowland Whisky Festival 2023. A rich aroma of rum-soaked raisins, Turkish Delight, cinnamon bagels and glacé cherries welcomed the Panel, bolstered by charred peaches, caramel popcorn and honey-roasted nuts. After the inviting nose, the taste neat came as quite a surprise – a spicy hit of chilli flakes followed by dry/bitter cask char. There was sweetness behind that attack, but it was difficult to get to the vanilla concentrate, fudge and toffee bonbons.

Following reduction, we felt that someone had burned an exotic antique tea chest before rum-infused desserts took centre stage on the palate, including warm banana split in a rum sauce, a classic French rum baba ... and how about a dark ’n’ stormy crème brûlée?  

“G16 Dark ‘n’ Stormy Crème Brûlée has an interesting back story, with a new distillery code because it will be the 16th grain whisky that we’ve bottled at the Society” says Euan Campbell, Head of Whisky Creation. “It’s the result of a custom distillation that we carried out when we did a special project to distil our own bourbon-style mash bill at distillery no. 156 back in April 2016.

“We used some different grains and created a mash bill of 58% corn, 21% malted barley and 21% unmalted rye. It was distilled in a pot still, which is unusual for a grain whisky, and then matured in heavily charred 24-month air seasoned new oak barrels from Kelvin Cooperage in the US, with toasted heads added to the casks to create even more flavour. We bottled this at 6-years old and at 50% abv as a nod to the “bottled in bond” strength you find in the US. It’s certainly one of a kind, a custom distillation never to be repeated, and utterly delicious.”