Just over a year ago, we decided to see if we could increase the impact of our whisky club by raising money for charity. We chose to raise money for York-based St Leonard’s Hospice who provide care and support for terminally ill people, and people with life-limiting illnesses.
We hit our first £2,000 goal and reset our ambitions to raise £5,000 in 12 months. Thanks 🙏🏻to the generosity of attendees and partners throughout 2025 – and in particular, our recent Dream Drams Charity tasting – we have just passed our new goal!
In its 3rd year, this tasting offered attendees the opportunity to try rare, exclusive and ‘unobtainium’ whisky, with quizzes, prizes and a charity auction at the end.
We’ll say a bit about each bottle further down (including links to buy) but in summary, the 2025 Dream Drams line-up in full was:
- Bowmore 1989 34 Year Old ‘Limited’ 70cl / 44% £800
- Murray McDavid Tobermory 28 Year Old Red Wine Finish, 70cl / 49.8% £249.95
- Springbank 2004 9 Year Old Gaja Barolo, 70cl / 58.6% £193.34
- Deanston 2006 Armagnac Cask Finish, 70cl / 55.7% £185
- Glenrothes 1995-2025 | 30 Year Old Signatory Vintage Symington’s Choice Single Cask 6980 70cl / 54.4% £254
- Bruichladdich X4+18 EDITION 01 70cl / 63.5% £225
- Cooper King ‘Super Smoky’, 70cl / 59.8% £NOT-FOR-SALE
The dram of the night as voted by 32 attendees was an ‘unobtainium’ whisky that is not-for-sale, kindly donated by Cooper King Distillery, making them two-time champions of the York Whisky Club ‘Dream Dram’ award.
Thanks to the generosity of Cooper King, LIMITED Whisky, Oak and Ember, The Whisky Exchange, TopWhiskies, Whisky Situation for whiskies and prizes, plus the UNBELIEVABLE generosity of all attendees of this and all our fund-raising tastings in the last twelve months, we have managed to raise over £5,500 for this worthy cause.
The JustGiving page is still open so if you weren’t able to attend – get donating!
LIMITED Bowmore 1989 34yr (44%, £800)
Limited? Anything but!
We wanted to kick off Dream Drams III with something special and so the first dram up was this 34yr old from one of the oldest distilleries on Islay.
This single-cask Bowmore spent over 33 years in a bourbon hogshead before being finished for 10 months in fresh sherry 1/4 casks.
A smooth, refined dram, the age gave the peat on the finish a subtle note, and as befits our ‘Dream Drams’ concept, was from the Exceptional Cask Collection – LIMITED specialise in single cask releases – 1 of 162 bottles.
Where to buy:
Find the Bowmore 34yr on the House of Decant website and other bottles from the LIMITED range.
Murray McDavid Tobermory 28yr Red Wine Finish (49.8%, £249.95)
We had a Murray McDavid lined up for Dream Drams II last year, but a full line-up tipped that – a Fiddichside 35 Year Old Chateau Lafite And Sherry Finish (46.7%) – into our first tasting of 2025 where it got dram of the night.
Attendees to Dream Drams III were glad this 28yr Tobermory finished in red wine barriques made it in, and this warmly received dram was outscored by only ONE vote for top honours.
The official tasting notes give you a nod as to why this was so popular:
- Nose: Red currants, dark plum, salted caramel.
- Palate: Grilled strawberry, coastal, hint of smoke.
- Finish: Red cherries, sea spray, herbal tea
Where to buy:
A BIG THANKS 🙏🏻 to Ed at TopWhiskies who gave us a discount to ensure more £££ went to charity donations and if you want to buy, check out the TopWhiskies website.
Springbank 2004 9 Year Old Gaja Barolo (58.6%, £193.34)
For each of the three years that we’ve offered our Dream Drams tasting, we’ve tried to go one better each time – so this year, we headed to Scotch Whisky Auctions determined to find an interesting delight.
Your York Whisky Club hosts are big Campbeltown fans so we were SUPER delighted to find a Springbank that was first aged in bourbon casks for a few years, then finished in refill Gaja Barolo casks (barrels that previously held wine from the famous Gaja winery in Barolo, Italy).
Some nervous bidding later and this dram was secured for £193.34 (inc fees / delivery) and even better for exclusivity points, this wasn’t from the 11,000 bottle run retail production but from a single cask, complete with charr sediment still in the bottle.
Lots of love for this whisky which scored bronze in the dram of the night voting.
Where to buy:
(Sorry, this is not for sale anywhere online, and if we see it again in the auctions, we may be bidding against you!)
Deanston 2006 Armagnac Cask Finish (55.7%, £185)
As we got to the halfway dram, we poured one of the latest releases from Highland distillery Deanston. Their ‘Warehouse 4’ exclusives are hand filled by the visitor centre, and this was a 19yr old dram which spent 6yrs being finished in Armagnac casks for “a lively mix of apple freshness, honeyed sweetness and zesty lemon brightness to the spirit.”
- Nose : Bold oak notes fade to reveal crisp and fresh green apples complimented by honey and apricots.
- Palate : Fresh and zesty lemon peel harmoniously blend with sweet notes of caramel and velvety vanilla ice cream.
- Finish : A bright finish of freshly cut oak and white chocolate.
Where to buy:
Available on the Deanston website
Glenrothes 1995-2025 | 30 Year Old Signatory Vintage Symington’s Choice Single Cask 6980 (54.4% £254)
We’ve enjoyed some great whisky from Signatory over the years, so as we tipped over the halfway point of Dream Drams III, we offered a single cask Glenrothes 1995 (30-year-old Speyside) from their ‘Symington’s Choice’ range.
The whisky was bottled in 2025 without colouring or chill filtration, from single cask 6980, a first fill Oloroso sherry butt that yielded a turnout of 499 bottles at a still-impressive natural cask strength of 54.4%.
Signatory’s owner Andrew Symington selects the casks for this series himself, as you might have guessed by the name, and he loves a good sherry cask.
Whilst Dream Drams isn’t a Christmas tasting per se, we have strong festive vibes and this was just the dram to get us in the mood!
Where to buy:
Available on the Whisky-Online Shop
Bruichladdich X4+18 EDITION 01(63.5% £225)
What do you do when in the final planning phase of a tasting, a major player drops a VERY INTRIGUING experimental release?
Of course, you buy it and our 6th dram of Dream Drams III was the new ‘X4+18’ from Bruichladdich. The first of its kind — a single malt Scotch whisky distilled four times and matured on Islay for 18 years.
In their words:
“The higher ABV, combined with the quiet passing of time yields a refined, gentle and fruit-laden character: muscovado sugar and honeyed pastry mingle with jammy fruits, mixed spice, and dry toasted oak.”
“Quadruple distillation is almost unheard of in whisky. Some Irish distillers and a handful of Scotch producers triple distil to achieve a lighter, smoother character – but we believe we’re the only distillery to have bottled a whisky distilled four times and brought it to market. We’re incredibly proud of the result.”
– Adam Hannet, Master Blender
As we discussed in the tasting, there must have been some seriously high ABV during the process and we applaud them for this bold experiment which had a brilliant flavour and was very drinkable, with or without a tiny dash of water.
Where to buy:
On the Bruichladdich website, and retailers such as Tyndrum Whisky
Cooper King “Super Smoky” (59.8%, £X)
VOTED AS DREAM … DRAM OF THE NIGHT!
For Dream Drams, we ask attendees to buy tickets at a price that allows us to maximise our charity donations.
For that, our promise is amazing whisky and – if we can – we love to offer ‘unobtainium’ that can NEVER be bought and they may try for the first, last and only time in that tasting.
Cooper King recently released ‘Smoked Cask: Peat-Smoked Oak, Single Malt Whisky’ as part of their “Cask Series of whiskies; a collection of unique expressions, each celebrating the marriage of our distinctive spirit with specially selected, individual casks.”
For that expression, they collaborated with Master Cooper Alastair Simms to craft a distillery first: a peated single malt whisky matured in peat-smoked bourbon casks. Interestingly, this has been made with un-peated barley – all the smoke has been derived from cold-smoking the casks themselves. They blended the whisky from three first-fill bourbon casks:
⚱️ One left unsmoked as a control
⚱️ One smoked for one hour
⚱️ One smoked for four hours.
The technique can be explained as:
🔥 Peat fire
💨 Smoke goes up a chimney,
❄️ Cools, as it is piped through the bung hole and into the cask
When we explained to co-founder Chris about our quest for unobtainium, he said that he could part with a bottle of the remaining 9 litres (now 8.3l) from the 4hr smoked cask which he described as:
“Funky fermented fruit, mango, coal-fired, burnt rubber, dockyard.”
We asked if it was medicinal but he said it wasn’t and had a more savoury edge.
What did we think?
“OH. MY. DAYS.”
“A revelation. Never tasted anything like that before.”
“When you want a smoky whisky, THAT is what you want.”
As befits a tasting called ‘Dream Drams’, it was a dream of what we want smoky whisky to be. We know they have plans to further explore this type of cask preparation and are SUPER EXCITED to see what they release.
HUGE THANKS 🙏🏻 to Abbie & Chris for this donation to our charity tasting, which got ‘DREAM DRAM 2025’, and they become reigning champions having previously won DREAM DRAM 2024 in the first year of our award.
Where to buy:
Not for sale but we will try and persuade Cooper King to make it in the future!
Didn’t attend Dream Drams III but wish to donate?
First of all – YOU ARE AMAZING!
Our JustGiving page is available for members who didn’t attend but who wish to contribute to this fantastic cause.
https://www.justgiving.com/page/yorkwhiskyclub-stleonards-hospice
