The Red Cask Company 8yo & SMWS 28.60 Juggling Flavour Balls | 58.8% & 60.6% ABV

A Simple Bid Unleashes a New Perspective on Whisky

I’ve been quiet lately through lack of spare time to really sit down and focus on whisky, but it doesn’t mean I’ve not noticed the few things happening around these parts. Where to start?

Is it the auction prices falling faster than Diageo’s trousers? Is it the saturation in the market of big ABV, single casked whisky of sub-10 years old that all combust your face? Is it talk of 2024 being catastrophic, not just for the whisky industry and smaller retailers, but for the general retail landscape in the United Kingdom? There’s even talk of young distilleries closing doors through lack of sales - might we see the Golden Age of Whisky turn into the Second Coming of the Whisky Loch? So much to think about, and we’re not even into February yet.

It was a while back that I won these bottles in the Whisky Auctioneer November auction. I’d done what I usually do and slink about the dying embers of the week-long ceremony, where the usual suspects are traded for tens of thousands and Springbank 10 is dangled to the desperate masses for, thank-the-big-yin, almost retail prices now. In those twilight moments when the auction slows down to a trickle of bids the outliers are exposed, left to sit at starting bids or low teens ready for folk like me to swoop in and try to snag some bargains.

Over the past wee while I’ve noted with interest that a lot of the whisky I was bidding for - Ardnamurchan, Glen Garioch, Cadenhead’s, SMWS and a few other secret ones - have started to wane in quantity at auction, specifically the Whisky Auctioneer. I use this platform, over say Scotch Whisky Auctions, because it was local to me in Perth, and it still is to family who can collect bottles for me. Where vast quantities of core range, single casks and special retailer bottlings would be bid upon to towering heights with hopes of getting hands on them for collections, now sit only a few older bottlings and some back-of-cupboard fodder that folk are throwing into the calming winds of whisky speculation.

I think I even saw a Talisker 10 there last time, you know, the one you can get from Chez Bezos for £25 in Black Friday sales. More often than not they’re now failing to claw back any semblance of what they would’ve paid, which is good for folk like me, but bad for speculators. If you were using just the Whisky Auctioneer to gauge the temperature in whisky each month, you’d be forgiven for thinking the frosty end-times were near, that whisky is most decidedly off the boil.

January has been, and I use this term carefully and considerately, utter stinking garbage for retail in the UK. January is usually quiet anyway, when the cold light of post-Santa blues hits like a stale trifle finger up the bum; rough, and a wee bit nippy. But this year it’s been extra obvious how reluctant people are to part with their money because December was a bit disappointing too. Purse strings have been pulled so quickly and so tightly after the delayed impact of the cost of living crisis, that little sparks appeared from the friction generated.

To try and combat this puckering the retailers have dusted off all their brightest strobe lights and have pointed them directly at punters - 20%, 30%, 50% off deals. Free this, free that. Just today, writing this, I have had another email from Douglas Laing, one of the newsletter sign-ups I’m yet to unsubscribe from, with even more discounts - we’re now at 30% off their “Premier Barrel” range, the Epicurean and some Old Particular bottlings. It’s everywhere. “January Sales” that started mid-December. “Extended Winter Sale” that allows the sales to bleed into February - it’s panic stations.

I haven’t bought a single bottle of whisky in January. A strange thing to say out loud; not buying a bottle of whisky in a calendar month shouldn’t be a notable enough event to comment upon, but given we’re all in the same game, it’s surprising. The last bottle of whisky I bought was actually two bottles won, again at Whisky Auctioneer, in the December auction - a Cadenhead’s Jura 13yo Manzanilla and a High Coast Berg that hammered at £40 and £36 respectively.

If you were using just the Whisky Auctioneer to gauge the temperature in whisky, you’d know for certain that we were heading for the deep freezer. That’s a £65 Jura that you can still buy from Cadenhead’s right now, and a High Coast Berg that retailed for £67 on Master of Malt. Someone lost bigly from their speculative meandering.

Why am I not buying whisky? I’m worried. Not because whisky looks to be on the downward slump or that I’ve decided that I’ve got enough whisky (because you can never have enough whisky), but worried about spending money on something that I feel is overpriced or disgustingly cynical (looking squarely at you Falkirk). I’ve hit a wall, my wall of limitation through knowledge and experience of being disappointed with the whisky I’ve bought or won at auction.

I’m no longer willing to follow-through in the act of spending money on whisky that interests me enough to raise the eyebrows, but not enough to tickle my fancy. I think my days of casting nets far and wide are over, mostly because the relentless flash of new releases from all corners of whiskyland has blinded me and I have no idea where to look anymore. Anything that is not a primal burning desire has been relegated to a passing leaf on the 100mph gusts currently scarifying the Isle of Skye.

I think these two bottlings have brought to bear a feeling I’ve had for a wee while, and echoes a lot of what I’ve been reading, from the sceptics of whiskyland with insatiable appetites for bangers in every bottle; I’ve been burned, literally, by cask strength whisky.

The disquiet started long ago with the Benriach Plavac hypersonic missile, and then more recently with the Mossburn Speyside Blend, reinforced with a few other samples of single cask whisky sent to me through the exciterville postal service. A sample of the latest Holyrood Cask Strength that could set a house on fire just by cutting a spicy fart in proximity to an open bottle, two independently bottled Tullibardine and an Old Pulteney that I popped over the festive holidays when we were down in the lowlands. I thought it might have been the heavy intake of pretzels and Christmas pudding that made my face swell to twice the size and my throat scream out in fury at what just passed through it.

But no, I think I’ve hit the point, where a lot of you have reached or will reach, at which cask strength whisky is fading from my list of absolutes. I have started reaching past the fiddlers and the exercises in resilience to the fuss-free, face-retaining 46%ers.

Review 1 of 2

The Red Cask Company Tullibardine | 404 bottles
8 Years Old - ‘Partly Matured’ in Oloroso Hogshead 650941,
58.8% ABV | £75 RRP (Sold Out). Won for £50 excl fee at auction.

This bottle, so pretty and innocent, has actually opened a rift in the space-time continuum. It’s revealed another layer of whisky, something I know the general whisky drinking public won’t really care about but where we, as exciters, find palpable interest.

It’s a technical issue, the ambiguity and opaqueness of which might actually be a surprise to a lot of people, especially if they’re experienced enough to be seeking out precise styles of whisky. Take this Tullibardine “Single Cask Series” bottling from The Red Cask Company independent bottlers. There’s three questions that have arisen from scrutinising the bottle and box. The first is if this whisky is actually a single cask. The second is if this whisky is actually cask strength, and the third is if this whisky can actually be called whisky under the strict definitions set out by the Scotch Whisky Association.

Dràm Mòr 7 year old Tullibardine, finished in a first-fill ex-bourbon barrel and released as part of a 56% ABV, 261 bottle outturn, was pretty light in colour. They called the colour “Yellow Grapefruit” on the website. The SMWS bottling in this review and others around indyland indicates that Tullibardine, matured in first-fill ex-bourbon barrel and released as a single cask, are pretty light in colour. This Red Cask Co bottling, of 8 years age, is the colour of a red wine gum, and states that it was partly matured inside one first-fill Oloroso hogshead - number 650941. One cask.

Google says that a hogshead is 200-250 litres, which when multiplied by 0.7 (70cl) gives circa 357 bottles. So an outturn of 404 bottles is raising questions - is this an oversized single cask of whisky that’s been decanted into an oversized “hogshead” for a wee spritz at the end? Or is this a larger single cask of whisky that’s been split, in some ratio, with some remaining in the bourbon cask (I assume) and the smaller parcel heading for an incredibly “active” sherry hogshead? Or is it a single cask of whisky that they watered down enough to eek out 404 bottles whilst still managing to hit an ABV of 58.8%?

The questions posed raise other questions. If it was a split parcel affair, then how could the whisky be so damned dark? I’ve heard of the term “active casks” before, and wondered why some young whiskies could be darker than others, and it’s because there’s still some liquid left in the cask when they fill it with new-make. Wink wink. Well if that’s the case, there must have been a significant amount of Oloroso left in their hogshead because this whisky is Dark, with a capital D, and only 8 years old.

The questions run deeper still. Going from the rather confusing, and potentially misleading writing on their packaging, this is purported to be a Single Cask of whisky. Above their logo on the box it states - “Single Cask Series”. Above their logo on the bottle it states “Cask Strength Series”. So taking those two statements as fact leads me to believe, through the guidance set out by the SWA, that one cask of whisky has been matured to a point and then bottled. But how can that be when it also says below ‘Tullibardine’ that this whisky has been ‘Partly matured in a First-fill Oloroso Hogshead.’ If it’s partly matured in anything then it cannot be called a single cask of whisky.

Let’s keep going. If it was one cask, where’s the 35 litres of whisky coming from to generate the extra 47 bottles? Is it too far of a leap in imagination to accept they had two 280 litre hogsheads with zero leakage and evaporation after 8 years? What if it was a 250L hogshead and they decanted that full 250L into another 250L Oloroso hogshead and then water it down to get 404 bottles, does that mean it’s still “Cask Strength”? Which cask?

What is “Cask Strength” anyway? I assume it would mean whisky that remains at the ABV at which it was in the cask, unfettered, untouched between cask and bottle? At this point, sensing the frustration boiling over, I head into the absurdly murky world of governmental legal documents and SWA regulations, “Technical Advice” and bureaucracy the scope, size, width, depth and utter jargon is so complex that I have to lie down for an hour.

How any punter could truly understand what’s in their bottle, going by the guidelines and regulations set out by the governing bodies and the statements therein, is beyond me. There’s no way to police, action or oversee Scotch Whisky enough to avoid the products of those willing to bend the rules for their own gain, as HMRC state clearly in their compliance documentation for verification of whisky bottlings. Cynicism runs deep in Auld Doog, but even this is tantamount to carving mashed potatoes.

HMRC recognise that at each stage of production there is scope for a wide range of, what may be considered, non-compliant activities to take place…These are technical issues to which it may not be appropriate for HMRC to react without reference to Defra, as Scotch Whisky GI policy holders. HMRC will refer any specific technical concerns that HMRC become aware of to Defra.

HMRC technical guidance on Scotch Whisky verification

Regardless of the type of cask used, the resulting product must have the traditional colour, taste and aroma characteristics of Scotch Whisky. These requirements also apply to any finishing as referred to below. Casks must be empty of their previous contents prior to being filled with Scotch Whisky or with spirit destined to become Scotch Whisky.

From TECHNICAL FILE FOR SCOTCH WHISKY

I mean, who really cares? Buy whisky, drink whisky, like or dislike whisky, move on to the next - normal people follow this trajectory, but for us folks determined to maximise the experience of whisky as an experience, and really explore it, not really knowing what has transpired in getting the whisky from still, through cask and into your bottle, is serious business.

What if you found out that the “Single Cask” whisky you bought specifically because you believed it would give you a true indication of pure, untouched matured spirit from a particular distillery was, in fact, eight smaller casks of various provenance, contents and size, and put into one bigger cask for a spin before being disgorged and labelled “Single Cask” whisky? That’s apparently allowed under SWA and HMRC regulations. I can’t find anything to dissuade me of this notion inside any of the official documentation. Who in their right mind is going to look up the SWA regulations each time you are considering buying a bottle of whisky?

We put our trust and faith in folk bottling whisky, to present the whisky truthfully and clearly. This Tullibardine, at a glance, does so. But the more you consider what’s written on the box and bottle, and the more you think about why they’ve chosen those specific words, the more it doesn’t make any sense. The merest crack in the door of trust and all integrity is lost.

The catalyst for all this are the printed words “partly matured”. “Partly matured” immediately means it can’t be a single cask - accepted. But ‘partly’ meaning that the whole contents of cask one has spent a shorter time maturing in cask two? Or partly matured in that a part of cask one was removed and put into cask two? Was the whisky inside cask two, the Oloroso cask, 58.8% ABV before bottling? What was the filling strength therefore if, as mentioned, zero liquid was lost over the maturation of 8 years in order to generate the 404 bottle outturn from an abnormally big cask one, and a matching abnormally big cask two? You can see how ambiguity is the enemy of progress.

I never thought about any of this when I stuck in a bid. I thought “I want to try more Tullibardine” and saw that there was a chance to win two 8 year old examples of Tullibardine from two different Independent Bottlers. More than that, I wanted to see if the SMWS bottling presented like all the other SMWS bottlings I’ve tried, regardless of distillery. But I'll get to that. I saw the words “Single Cask” and the beautiful IBISCO decanter bottle showing off that remarkable colour, and went for it.

It never crossed my mind to question if this single cask bottle actually was a single cask of whisky. I acted upon my instincts as a non-exciter whisky purchaser. I saw it, I wanted it, I went for it. I won this bottle for a hammer price of £50. The RRP of this was circa £75, from what I can find online, so it might potentially be a winner from a bang to buck perspective if it’s bringing the flavour experience. Maybe then I could forgive the ambiguity?

The truth is in the taste, apparently.

Nose

Bit of damp wood, bit of dusty earth. Dark red. Sandy pit. Chickpea tin. Juicy jam jar. Big red cedar woods. Pepper pot.

Water: Sweet sour sauce ramps up - brighter red now. The sherry arrives too, almost burny.

Palate

Hot as feck. Red hot. Spicy bamstick. Dissipates into a big hot chili jam fest. Sour chocolate.

Water: Nicer - brings it down to a sweet sauce. Big sherry feels, earthy redness. Very little tropical or banana notes here, just red earthy dampness.

The Dregs

The answer is no, I can’t. It’s not bringing anything that has me singing, and there’s no real semblance of the Tullibardine character that I can find in here that mirrors what I’ve found in the Dràm Mòr or SMWS bottlings. There’s no Skittles or tropical fruits, no buttery cedars or leafy bananas. It’s just dark sherry and jam. The nose is interesting and engaging, but the palate is wild.

At full ABV it’s fiery and spicy to the point of uncomfortable burn and, being a lover of cask strength whisky, I find this all too frustrating. There’s been complaints around the whisky sphere of young whiskies being thrown into active casks to inject a quick turbo boost of flavour, but in doing so making it difficult to tame and masking the very thing that drew us to that particular whisky in the first place - character.

This is a nice jammy whisky, but it could be any nice jammy whisky. It brings to mind the Glenrothes Infrequent Flyers and I have to question why I was ok with that bottling and am not ok with this one. I guess because nowhere on the bottle does AWWC’s Glenrothes state that it’s single cask or cask strength. It does show initial maturation cask and any finishing casks too - a bit more transparency. But I reckon I’ve been blindsided by this “single cask” truth and it’s making me wonder if anything is what it seems anymore.

This Tully is a sherry bomb for sure but, going by the age, colour and weirdness of bottle outturns and part-maturations and all that other lingo, is probably because the Oloroso sherry cask has a huge part to play in the final product here. Gone are the whimsical romantic notions that all colour in whisky is derived from slow maturation and cask integration. Looking at the AWWC Glenrothes, it’s even worse! It’s almost like treacle compared to this Red Cask Co. The whisky didn’t really do much, other than form a dilution for the sherry that remained inside the cask. A spot of sherry cordial for the whisky. Maybe there should be a new category introduced called “cocktails”.

Under the definition of what Scotch Whisky should be as described in the Technical File for Scotch Whisky: “Regardless of the type of cask used, the resulting product must have the traditional colour, taste and aroma characteristics of Scotch Whisky.” In this instance, and now looking back through many instances of whiskies I’ve reviewed it seems, that stipulation has been bent so far that it now forms a circle. The Red Cask Co have sort of painted themselves into a corner by the very nature of their title - all their bottlings must be deep dark reds even if they don’t need to be.

I wonder if this is an exercise in vanity of branding, rather than flavour of spirit. Disappointing. Disappointing whisky, disappointing realisation of rule breaking and disappointing that I now have an even more cynical view of whisky opportunism. I can only take some semblance of relief that I didn’t buy this at retail of £75.

Score: 5/10

Review 2 of 2

SMWS ‘Juggling Flavour Balls’ - Society Cask: 28.60 - 237 Bottles
Tullibardine 8 Years Old in 1st Fill ex-Bourbon Barrel
60.6% ABV | £49 RRP (Sold Out). Won for £40 excl fee at auction.

I open SMWS bottles now with a dose of trepidation for fear of finding the same buttery biscuit notes that I’ve found in almost all of the SMWS bottlings I’ve bought. See the “A Walk in the Woods” review for more details. The SMWS notes on the bottle reads:

“Juggling three balls (sweetness, fruit, nuts) one finds autumnal fruit pies, almond slice, coffee and walnut cake, maple fudge and marzipan.”

I mean, as far as notes go, that’s a bona fide mouth watering concoction. Maple fudge! Autumnal fruit pies! The colour of this whisky is, as mentioned above, light straw and more aligned with age and cask type. No finishing has been carried out - this is one cask disgorged into bottles, 237 of them to be exact. I won this just under RRP again but, given it’s sold out on their website and that only through auction can I get a hold of SMWS bottlings, I’m happy to have paid what I did. I just desperately need it to bring my pessimism about single casks of whisky, whatever the heck they actually are, back from the brink.

Nose

Huge buttery digestive biscuits. Mammoth. Skittle bags and crisp almond wafer sticks - like those wafer straws found only in weird aunties houses. Hints of dusty earth or concrete. Luminescent mango. Big pineapple and multi-tropical juice drink - Sunny D! Fresh mint. Rice pudding! Swimming Pool. Leafy banana. Light highland toffee and fudge. 

Water: brings the toffees, sugary sweeties, cedar woods and maybe even fish and chips. 

Palate

Starts as a big spicy balloon: wee bit rubbery and the throat is warming up nicely, rather than like an afterburner. Buttery biscuits come through from the palate and so too does the almonds and sweet toffee fudge. Very moreish. Warming - it’s sweet and rubbery at full speed. Woods. Tizer. Tropical sweets, juices, scents. Mango compote. 

Water takes that warmth and ups the sweetness a touch. More caramels and sugars.

The Dregs

This bottle was opened when I returned to the Island after Christmas and immediately found those buttery biscuit notes! What is going on with SMWS? However after spending a bit of time with it, alongside the Red Cask Co’s version, it’s way more aligned with what I expected single cask Tullibardine to be - bright, fruity, sweet and tropical.

It’s big. It’s bold and it demands tinkering but holy Christmas am I glad that it’s not a shunker. A nose inside the glass is like sniffing a bag of Skittles and I’m over the moon to be picking apart the notes I can find in this whisky. There’s little pips of toffee sweetness surrounded by that nuttiness mentioned on their label, but most of all it’s the tropicals that are swooning me.

It's an endearing whisky, with a genuine thrill to head back into the glass and see what’s happening now. The Dràm Mòr didn’t quite catch me like this one has; I felt a bit ambivalent with the 7 year old, despite it being bright and tropical like this one, but for whatever reason this 8yo is hitting the feels. It’s maybe not an out-and-out belter if I’m honest and peel myself away from the relief that it's not crap, but it’s got some really lovely flavours and is at the very least balanced. Water helps with a heat that wasn’t troubling me anyway, and opens up the sweeter side to this mango madness.

I feel a bit discombobulated. Maybe it’s reading into the regulations and stipulations and guidelines that seem to be disregarded without fear of retribution. It might be the Dramface group-chat realisation that there appears to be very little barrier to behind-the-scenes jiggery pokery, or that in the current climate of whisky saturation, with millions of bottlings and finishes and expressions and choice, I just don’t know where to go from here.

I think I’ll be a lot more scrutinising of what I’m actually looking at going forward: is it actually a single cask or a combination of casks made to look like a single cask? Should it be that colour or is it an indication that an overtly active cask has been used to somehow mask something dodgy in the original maturation? 

Is all this sapping the fun from enjoying whisky when, even after all that care and nit-picking to choose a bottle, the whisky is still a bit…meh?

I’m starting to question all reality after the whole “Single Cask” thing and the huge gaping loophole that is potentially being exploited, but knowing the reputation of the SMWS and that all their bottles are legitimately single cask decantations, I trust that this is a genuine and truthful representation of 8 year old Tullibardine until I’m told otherwise. The biscuit thing aside, this makes me want to try more Tullibardine expressions.

A sip of the softening SMWS Juggling Flavour Balls reminds me that yes, whisky is still worth the chase, whisky is worth the scrutiny and, with yummy flavour to be found, worth the tinkering. I might not be buying as many cask strengths or single casks with wanton disregard, but I will be very wary of things like the Red Cask Company’s bottlings and others that try to mask the provenance of their whisky.

If it looks too good to be true, it usually is.

Score: 7/10

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

Other opinions on this:

Whiskybase (SMWS)

Whiskybase (Red Cask Co.)

Got a link to a reliable review? Tell us.