Auchroisk 16 Year Old 2007 SMWS Single 1st Fill Oloroso & New Oak HTMC Hogshead Finish 95.100 Spice Surprise Speyside Single Malt Scotch Whisky (2024) 70cl
1 of 494 bottles produced from a single bourbon hogshead vatted into 1st Fill Oloroso & New Oak HTMC Hogsheads
The Scotch Malt Whisky Society was founded in Edinburgh in 1983 by Phillip 'Pip' Hills who, while travelling around Scotland in the 1970s, fell in love with whiskies drawn straight from the cask. After he expanded his syndicate the Society was purchased by Glenmorangie PLC in 2004. In 2015, the Society was sold back to private investors. In June 2021, the private owners floated the holding company The Artisanal Spirits Company plc on the Alternative Investment Market of the London Stock Exchange.
It has a unique code system where the first number refers to the distillery and the second refers to the cask from which the bottle comes. SMWS also offers the largest range of distilleries of any independent bottler. These curiously named drams really do have something for every whisky lover!
The SMWS are one of the Britain's most revered independent bottlers with a worldwide network of partner bars with one mission of getting as much whisky at natural cask strength without water to different nations including USA, Canada, Switzerland, UK, Austria, Germany and many others.
TASTING NOTES
The neat nose was redolent with fruit scone mix, vanilla essence and aromatic notes of cherry blossom, white chocolate and sweet earthiness. With some water we found hazelnuts in browned butter, apple rings and Turkish delight. The neat palate delivered a surprising prickle of chilli jam, along with orange zest, star anise and fruity hot sauce with lime juice. The reduced palate displayed a wonderfully rich texture, with flavours of butterscotch sauce, salted almonds and fig chutney. The starting point for this small batch was two bourbon hogsheads of single malt Scotch whisky. One cask was transferred at 13 years old to a Spanish oak oloroso hogshead, and the other at 14 years old to a new oak heavy toast medium char hogshead. The casks were then blended together before bottling.
About Auchroisk
Auchroisk [pronounced Orth-rusk] is one of Diageo’s ‘nutty-spicy’ sites.
Here the heavy character is produced by rapid mashing, quick fermentation and, in the wash stills, a rapid boiling regime which almost cooks the solids and allows controlled carryover of some solids. This almost singed character [shared with Blair Athol] is most obvious at new make but recedes with maturation, being replaced by a balanced honeyed cereal sweetness.
The building of Auchroisk in 1972 was meant to herald the start of a new era for blended Scotch. Certainly architecturally (like its contemporary, Allt-a-Bhainne) it stands out – a white, harled, modernist structure in the moorland. It was commissioned by IDV, at that time the parent firm of J&B which had decided that sales of the blend justified another distillery being built to join its Speyside portfolio of Glen Spey, Knockando and Strathmill.
Auchroisk was first bottled as single malt in 1986 and was the first to carry the prefix ‘Singleton’, a name now attached to single malts from Glen Ord, Glendullan and Dufftown. Although highly regarded by writers and judges in its time, it never quite made the leap from cult to major brand. Interestingly, the maturation process involved decanting 10-year-old ex-Bourbon matured whisky into ex-Sherry casks for a further two years of secondary maturation, making it the first example of finishing, but IDV never thought of talking up the process, leaving Balvenie and Glenmorangie to be regarded as the pioneers of the technique. The brand was dropped in 2001 and has subsequently quietly slipped back into the shadows.
Although somewhat remote, the large tracts of land surrounding the distillery make this the ideal site for one of Diageo’s main northern warehousing complexes.
57.2% ABV
70cl
