Official Bottling | 46% ABV

When Is A Single Barrel Not A Single Barrel?

Before I get into answering that question, let’s have a bit of background on this new Irish single malt kid on the block.

Limavady itself is a small market town not far from my neck of the woods in Northern Ireland, with a population of just over 12,000. The town name derives from the Irish Léim a' Mhadaidh which translates as 'leap of the dog'. According to local myth, a dog belonging to one of the local O’Cahan chiefs jumped the River Roe at O’Cahan’s Rock to get help from nearby clans after a surprise enemy attack. Hence the nod to this on the Limavady whiskey label. You can visit O’Cahan’s Rock in the Roe Valley country park and I highly recommend you do if you are ever in the area, as it provides quite the vista – especially at sundown with a good dram. 

The town of Limavady developed under the guidance of Sir Thomas Phillips. If you think you’ve heard that name before you’d be right. This is the same Thomas Phillips of Bushmills fame, the man granted a licence to distil whiskey in 1608 from King James I.

The licence stated: “For the next seven years, within the countie of Colrane, otherwise called O Cahanes countrey, or within the territorie called Rowte, in Co. Antrim, by himselfe or his servauntes, to make, drawe, and distil such and soe great quantities of aquavite, usquabagh and aqua composita, as he or his assignes shall thinke fitt; and the same to sell, vent, and dispose of to any persons, yeeldinge yerelie the somme 13s 4d.”

Notice no actual reference to Bushmills, but a definite reference to Coleraine and the O’Cahan’s. A little food for thought there.

Limavady Distillery itself came into being in 1750 on grounds owned by John Alexander. There’s some dispute as to where the distillery was situated. Some maintain it was on the banks of the River Roe just opposite what is now Station Road, close to the local bus station. Others are convinced it was located on what is now Church Street. 

However, pre-World War Two, it was known as Distillery Road which may actually lend support to the Station Road location as Church Street/Distillery Road leads directly to Station Road.

Alfred Barnard visited the distillery in 1886 and declared Limavady whiskey, "cheers the heart of many an ‘Exile of Erin’ in distant colonies of the Empire". By 1890 production had reached a substantial 1.2 litres of spirit per annum. In 1913 the distillery was purchased by the Distillers Finance Company who were primarily a Scotch whisky company and subsequently closed the distillery in 1915.

Today’s Limavady single malt is the brainchild of Darryl McNally. For those new to Irish whiskey, Darryl cut his teeth at Bushmills before becoming head distiller at Dublin’s Liberties Distillery.

On the bottle, McNally states Limavady Distillery of yore belonged to his family before they lost it pre-prohibition, and that he’s now reclaiming that lost heritage. But as yet, there is no actual Limavady Distillery.

However, I do know plans have been submitted for a distillery in Magilligan, just at the foot of the stunning Binevenagh mountain. So this particular bottle is a sourced whiskey and helps me answer the question I posed at the outset: when is a single barrel not a single barrel?

Well in the case of Limavady single malt single barrel! 

Let’s answer the burning question of where the malt comes from before we get on to the single barrel issue. Considering McNally’s history with Bushmills, did he manage to secure a parcel of Bushmills malt? Not in this instance. Did it come from Cooley? No, as the website clearly states it’s triple distilled and Cooley malt was double distilled. So where did this malt come from? I’ll let you into a little secret… Great Northern Distillery which is John Teeling’s latest start up after he sold Cooley to Beam Suntory, which first starting distillation in 2015.

OK Archibald… is this a single barrel release or not I hear you cry? Well yes and no.

For those of you who are enthusiasts you probably know where I’m going already. For those of you new to whiskey please bear with me. But by doing a little detective work we’ll get to the endgame.

The bottle label states the maturation is ex-bourbon barrels and finished in Pedro Ximinez barrels. We also know (from the Limavady website) that each cask gives us 846 bottles at 46% abv.

A standard bourbon barrel has a volume of 200 litres when filled at 63.5% ABV. It’s impossible to gain 846 bottles from that even at 46%. But a PX puncheon at 500 litres will take at least two and a half bourbon barrels filled at 63.5% abv (or slightly less allowing for the 2% annual angel’s share and lowering or ABV we expect in our temperate climate) and would easily produce 846 bottles when watered down. So from a purists point of view these are not really single barrels or single casks.

Crucially from a legal point of view they are. The art of re-casking is nothing new and brands like Glendronach in Scotland and Redbreast in Ireland have been renowned for this type of offering. So while in truth they’re the product of multiple casks, the fact they originate from one final, single cask, allows them the moniker of single barrel or single cask.

Review

Ex-bourbon and PX puncheon, 46% ABV
£45 or thereabouts and widely available

Nose

Peach, vanilla and overripe banana. Cotton candy and honey. Some orange peel, marzipan, toasted oak and malt underpinning it all.

Palate

A decent, oily, mouthfeel on arrival. Honeyed malt, apples, peach and ripe banana covered in caramel sauce. A little ginger and allspice with almonds and milk chocolate. There’s a definite green herbal note mixed in too. The finish is quite short but sticks to the sweet and fruity theme of both the palate and nose.

The Dregs

This is a decent dram. Nothing more, nothing less. It certainly won’t get the pulse racing –  well it didn’t for me at any rate. If anything, it highlights that the good folk at Great Northern Distillery can make a very good malt spirit and that McNally isn’t too shabby at his cask management. Why should he be? He’s had plenty of practice.

It’s a young whiskey and as such acquits itself well but it’s a touch pricey. For all the effort of calling it a ‘single barrel’ to make it more premium I can’t say it warrants the premium price tag. This is especially the case when I can still buy Redbreast 12 year old for £40 in my local supermarket, or a Bushmills 10 year old for around £35. 

On top of that is the batch variation. Gavin who gave me the sample of this was quite enamoured with his first bottle from which this sample came from, but he’s told me he’s struggled with his second bottle, mentioning that it definitely isn’t as good as the first.

Score: 5/10

Tried this? Share your thoughts in the comments below. AG