What we drank at Independents Day
A fantastic sell-out “Independents Day” tasting saw us take over the back room of The Knavesmire for a trip through the interesting output of some well-known and up-and-coming independent bottlers.
We started with Signatory 14yr old Inchgower before a Scottish Malt Whisky Society (SMWS) special, “Sweet Shop in a Dunnage Warehouse” a 12yr old first fill Bourbon which an SMWS code lookup site tells us is from Longmorn distillery. Having slightly rolled the eyes at the adjectival soup of the tasting notes, we then had to admit that, yes, you could detect foamy shrimp and tangy citrus fruit when tasting – a complex and delightful flavour!
We stuck with Speyside for our next dram, a 51.6% Blair Athol bottled by Simply Whisky. A shout out to Ralfy for inspiring Jim to pick up this bottle which received a lot of love and picked up dram of the night.
Part of our ethos as a whisky club is to showcase truly interesting whiskies that attendees may not have heard of or tried. So, after discovering this expression at the 2022 Whisky Lounge York Whisky Festival, we poured a bottle of Agitator finished in chestnut casks produced by Caskshare. Agitator have a very distinctive vacuum distillation process and combined with a unusual finish, this created a lot of pondering and discussion.
We were then onto the peaty whiskies, starting with the 21-year old ‘Faemussach’ from Chorlton Whisky, a cask strength hogshead.
We topped out the night with Edition 9 from The Fisherman’s Retreat, a Bruichladdich finished in a first-fill Viognier white wine barrel direct from the Yalumba winery in the Barossa Valley, South Australia, the oldest family-owned vineyard in Australia. Recounting the travels of Fisherman’s Retreat owner Hervey in a global cask-sourcing mission, we were appreciative of the effort that went into producing this fantastic dram.
List of the drams:
- Signatory Inchgower 14 Year Old 2008 (46%, £44.95)
- SMWS Sweet Shop in a Dunnage Warehouse (56.7%, £69.60)
- Simply Whisky Memories (51.6%, £69.95)
- Caskshare Agitator Chestnut Cask (59.6%, £75)
- Chorlton Whisky Faemussach 21-year-old (56%, £105)
- Fisherman’s Retreat Edition 9 Bruichladdich Rhinns (50%, £75 – 50cl)
The staff at the Knavesmire were great and the drams created a lot of conversation around the room – in the words of one attendee:
“Definitely your most interesting tasting to-date!”
We were happy to set a high bar and it was great to share it with a range of people at different stages of their whisky journey.
A shout out to the University of York Whisky Society for bringing quite a few of their members along, remarked on by a first time attendee:
“I think it’s great what you’re doing, supporting young people getting into whisky”.
Obviously, our answer is that EVERYONE should develop a whisky passion at some point in their lives, slàinte! 🥃
Jim + Jasper
