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I'm doing rather well in raffles this year - dinner for two, a pair of walking poles, a crate of Bulmers and a venison carcass at the MRT dinner - and a somewhat odd bottle of whisky in the school one yesterday.
It was donated by a local business who sell novelty plots of land to Americans, and is obviously commissioned by them as it has their name on the label. Rather than a 'X year old' like normal, the label states 'distilled 1987', is a single malt, cask strength (53%) and produces at the Isle of Arran distillery. I can't find it for sale on their own website, nor the IoA distillery site, in order to find out more about it.
Do any of our resident experts know what the IoA malts are like?
Sounds awful, I'll take it off your hands.
It was donated by a local business who sell novelty plots of land to Americans
Maybe they bottle the pee* they take?
*insert proper word here
I will consider your kind offer...
The Isle of Arran Distillery opened in 1995 so it wasn't distilled there in 1987.
As genuine as the plots of land then?
Interesting!
How's your arse BTW?
Probably some blended pish, i'll give ya 50 groats and a wee smile!
The business has brought mixed opinions from some locals, some very pro, some very anti. I believe their has been a campaign against them on tinternet. I might email the distillery 🙂 Need to decide whether it's going to be any good or to fob it off on an English relative for Christmas.
How's your arse BTW?
Much the same, but I haven't got hold of a suitable shim yet. Working on it! (Well, my mate is, if he hasn't got one I'll try it one my CX bike and see how it goes).
I'll ask an expert. Hold the line please, caller.
I had some bottles of the original Arran Founders Reserve malt. Around 7 years old, maybe 9/10. It wasn't anything special, though I think the stuff has been getting better..
The SMWS now has some Arran malts and they get good reviews, so maybe the cask strength stuff is worth a punt.
Standing by Cougar, standing by.
Thanks kcal. Guess it could be worth asking them.
While you wait may I send out my deepest sympathies on winning a crate of Bulmers.
It was orange flavour. No wonder it got donated as a raffle prize. I was embarrassed at my success so insisted that it go back to be redrawn 😀
Jesus it's worse than I thought.
I visited the distillery a few years ago and brought back a couple of 10 years old. They were splendid. They like to use unusual wine casks to mature them in.
Highland Titles?
Andy Wightman (looks like his website is down) covered their scam when it came to light.
That's the one. There's been some arguments back and forth between the ones that think it's a scam and the folk that don't. Quite why anyone would spend money on it is beyond me.
Exactly. Ultimately fairly harmless though, there are worse scam artists out there, preying on the vulnerable etc.
Back to the whisky, after getting nothing but single malt for xmas and birthdays for years, my collection has finally dwindled to single digits. I've been dropping lots of hints for a bottle of Lagavulin from Santa. I was amazed to see Tesco asking nearly £50 for a bottle of Ardbeg the other day, it was £25 last time I bought a bottle!
Seems a bit steep. The supermarkets are usually quite decent at having something decent on a good offer. Jura Origin for about £15-£18 was the last one I had out of the local Coop.
From what I recall, Highland Titles malt is Arran 15
There is a good chance you wont be abke to tell what it is from the label. I say this as a friend bought a barrel and had it bottled under his name. He offered to sell me some and gave me a name to google / price up but had I not had that it would have been impossible to trace/value plus you have to reply on what you're told
Could it be something the IoA distillery bought in and bottled to get things moving while their's matured?
I think I'll email them. Not especially bothered, more intrigued now.
If it's the Douglas Laing bottling of arran 15yo it's a very nice drop. And if it's from Highland Titles well I would cover the label the better to enjoy a dram 😀
The oracle has spoken.
I'm not signing up an account just to reply, so feel free to pass this on...As others have said, it can't be Isle of Arran. Too early - they didn't build their distillery until 1994, and didn't distil until June 1995.
So the labelling is important. If it says "bottled by" IoA, then it's a cask they bought and resold to keep revenue flowing.
If it genuinely says "distilled by", it's a fake or a cruel joke. Or a truly bad labelling mistake.
Either way, there's probably no way of knowing what it is without going back to IoA themselves (who may have records), or to the company who paid for it (who sound totally trustworthy! Honest!)
A picture of the label may help, but other than confirming it's not IoA I can't do much - sorry.
Isle of Arran do produce some small scale blends - so they may have had casks.
That doesn't help identify it, but does show it may be genuinely a cask of whisky. However, it may have been teaspooned, so has no provenance.
I asked what 'teaspooning' was.
When someone sells a cask of whisky for blending, they have no guarantee it'll be used for blending. Well known names fear that this means casks that aren't their "brand taste" might get bottled with their name on it.
So before shipping it, they open it up and drop a teaspoon of whisky in from another distillery.
Hey presto - no longer technically a single malt. Can't be called that distillery anymore. Can only be used for blending.
Age statement would still apply, of course (assuming the teaspoon of whisky was same or older) - but makes a poetntially valueable cask quite useless except for blending.
(Which is not useless at all to my mind, but that's a different discussion.)
One teaspoon won't change the flavour, so no problems there.
(Well, unless you teaspoon your Auchentoshan with some Lagavulin. But they're not owned by the same company, so it's unlikely.)
Teaspooned casks often use the same region for the teaspoon, so you get a "15yo Highland Cask" kind of effect.
So if it's a malt whisky but not a single malt, it could be that.
The poster says it's a single malt, but without seeing the label it's hard to know - it's the kind of thing that's easy to assume.
In the reply, I'd probably emphasis the fact that they have a blend - it's almost certainly why they'd have such a cask.
And if it's from Highland Titles well I would cover the label the better to enjoy a dram
🙂
Cougar - can email you a picture or try and post it up on here.
I think that may help.
Can't copy the BB code on Flickr, I shall email it.
Update:
The OP sent me a photo of the label, I've forwarded it to my mate and just got a reply.
Basically, it confirms what I said - either another malt they bottled which was originally meant for one of their blends, or a labelling error
It said "single malt", so shouldn't have been teaspooned
That's about the only clarification I'd have to make having now seen it
So there you go.
Obliged to you both...
Here is the distillery's reply...
As you might know, we sell private casks and this particular label looks like it has been a private owner's cask bottled under a private label. When producing a private label, cask owners are obliged to state the origin of the whisky which is where our name comes onto the label. This is something that is entirely normal, however the mention of a 1987 age statement is, as you rightly point out, not correct as we didn't even exist then! Someone has provided false info on the label and this will definitely not be a whisky from 1987. At very oldest it will be from 1995. Perhaps the person who gave you the whisky would know a bit more about its origins?
As a great philosopher once wrote...naughty naughty, very naughty.
If anyone is interested, I still have lots of bottles of the Arran Founder's Reserve Single Malt, which I would be happy to sell or swap. Always looking for bike bits or other interesting whiskys or other booze!
I still have about 3 or 4 too, Rich T 🙂 the slightly golden / bronze coloured ones?
Yes, that one, but I've got about 30 bottles...
Do you want to swap for a misleadingly labelled exclusive bottle of who knows what? 😀
Yes, why not.
I'll drop you an email then.
Well, the mystery whiskey has arrived and I have cracked it open. This is what I think, but remember I haven't had an Arran whiskey other than the Founder's Reserve.
It is definitely cask strength and needs some water. Not a typical island malt - it has lots of sherry and reminds me of Strathisla, no smoke or peat to speak of. Is it perhaps an Arran Sherry Cask, distilled in 97 but labelled 1987 by mistake?
Anyway, it is very drinkable and I'm happy with the swap.
Thanks thegreatape, Arran Founder's Reserve on the way.
Cougar - thanks for the info on 'teaspooning'. Very interesting!
Glad you're pleased with it Rich, and that it's not a dud!