Thompson Bros Private Stock 8yo
‘Teaspooned’ Blended Malt Whisky | 57.1% ABV
Refocusing for 2025
In my last review before Christmas I talked about the fantastic time I had at the inaugural Wales Whisky Festival. I fully intended to follow that up with a similar piece about Glasgow’s festival a week later; but in all honesty, after reading Dougie and Ainsley’s write ups I felt they had summed everything up perfectly and having spent most of the weekend with them quite a bit of repetition would’ve crept in.
Instead, I’m going to talk about where I am with whisky as we enter a new year, in the hope it will resonate with others.
Many people who have been in the game longer than me will already have their preferences very much set and rarely deviate from them. They’ve tried plenty, they know what they like and they stay in that lane for the most part. Others will be all over the place trying to chase the next flavour until they hit that sweet spot and decide what whisky grabs their attention the most.
It’s important to never lose the curiosity, but why buy what you know is unlikely to suit your palate best?
I’ve been on that flavour chase for some time, buying whisky from a multitude of distilleries with different cask types. If the price was right and it looked interesting, I would buy it. As a result I now have a fairly sizeable shelving unit full of whisky and no room for expansion.
That’s a nice position to be in and there’s no need to get the tissues out for my terrible plight, but I do need to buy less and be much more selective. This scenario will be familiar with many of you following an explosion of whisky excitement in the past few years. The shelves are creaking and the pockets are tightening.
It has been a colder than average winter here in the UK, and whilst I have been enjoying Glasgow’s Peated Cask Strength and one or two other bottles from my sherry/wine section including a Caol Ila I rated highly this past year, it’s the ex-bourbon area where my hands have been drawn to the most.
Whether that be the delicious Scapa 10, one of a number of single cask Loch Lomonds I have on hand - that never disappoint - or my beloved Deanston 18. The sherry and wine casks are getting less of the love, with some bottles that have been there for a couple of years not getting their cork popped very often at all. My problem with a lot of these sherry and wine matured whiskies is that, unless the spirit is robust enough to fight its way through the cask influence, you end up with mostly sherry or wine flavours. They can be delicious, but there’s only so many of those I need.
Delving into the darkest reaches of the shelves I can see a North Star Craigellachie 8 year old from a PX octave, a 14 year old Knockdhu from Sweetdram finished in a Moscatel cask, a Bunnahabhain Stiuireadair and a Glencadam Reserva de Porto Branco. All are fine given the right mood, but when I see them I am rarely compelled to pour any into my Glencairn.
I’m not saying I’ll never buy sherry or wine cask matured whisky again, I do like to have a bit of variety and there are moments when I am glad to have it on hand, but I am getting to a stage now where I have realised I should be buying fewer of them and sticking to my preferred lane. When I do buy them I will be looking more towards refill than first-fill. Although there are signs of prices cooling a little, whisky is still expensive and when space is limited I need to cherry-pick more carefully.
I enjoy a wide variety of ex-bourbon cask flavour profiles, but my favourites tend to be those that exhibit lots of fruit notes, whether they be orchard, citrus or tropical: if the fruit really pops then I’m a happy boy.
With this in mind, everything suggested the bottle I am reviewing today would be right up my street.
Review
Thompson Bros Private Stock 8yo, ‘Teaspooned’ Blended Malt, distilled 2016, bottled 2024, 57.1% ABV
£55 via ballot direct from the Thompson Bros
When the e-mail came in for the latest Thompson Brothers ballot in late December, I was instantly drawn in by the tasting notes and the price of this bottle. Matured in a first-fill ex-bourbon hogshead, it is described as a teaspooned blended malt, which means nearly all the liquid is from a single distillery. Do they put a teaspoon of whisky in there at all? I don’t know. Probably. Probably not.
I looked for distillery clues in the description and on the label, which depicts Dornoch castle, but was unable to figure it out. No matter; the tasting notes featuring an array of fruits - which unfortunately I can’t find now as the page has been taken down - were enough for me to put an entry into the ballot. A couple of days later I discovered I had been successful.
The ever-knowledgeable community often let the cat out of the bag and all the signs pointed to this being Ballindalloch. Upon receiving the bottle, I noticed a what3words address in the bottom corner of the back label. For those not familiar with what3words, it divides the world into three metre squares and gives each square a three word name. It’s saved a number of lives when emergency services have used it to pinpoint a person's exact location. In this instance the three words are scarred.squirted.pouch, which when entered into the app on my phone pointed straight to Ballindalloch distillery. Therefore, we can be fairly certain that is correct. Why else would it be there?
Therefore, we appear to have an eight year old Ballindalloch at 57.1% for £55 which is almost half the price of what the distillery themselves charge for a single cask strength release. That’s the issue I have with Ballindalloch – the price.
Almost £90 for 46% or £105 for a cask strength version is far too much for young whisky. They have a 100,000 litre capacity and according to the Malt Whisky Yearbook are producing 75,000 currently. That’s small compared to many for sure, but it’s the same as Nc’Nean and they will sell me a bottle of their organic single malt for around £50. You could argue that they grow the barley themselves at Ballindalloch and that demands a premium, but so does Lochlea and I can get that for less than £50, or £65 for a cask strength. Glengyle only produces fractionally more spirit and again, I can get a bottle for much less.
The cask strength bottles appear to be single casks, which I know often comes with a bit of a premium, but I’ve never really subscribed to that. All I want is quality whisky at a fair price, be it one cask or one hundred and one casks.
If Ballindalloch can sustain a customer base at those prices then all power to them. They are free to charge whatever they want to and it’s up to the individual consumer to decide whether they are happy to pay it. It’s just over a year since they first released whisky and the initial excitement to try the new thing could quickly turn to apathy if customers feel they can find better value elsewhere.
Nose
Bright and expressive right off the bat. Tinned peaches and cream, with ripe banana, sharp sour apple, gooseberry, caramel, sour dough, polished brass and wood shavings.
Palate
Sharp, zingy and alive. It starts with sour apple and sherbet lemon, before a quite aggressive heat comes in, with ginger and then charred oak bringing in a bitterness. Vanilla cream mingles into the fruits and the heat begins to subside, with desiccated coconut, copper coins and peppermint at the end.
The Dregs
The nose on this is fabulous and the flavours on the palate are very good too, but it is slightly let down by being a bit hot. Even a good teaspoon of water fails to tame it. I tried it alongside a Kilkerran eight year old cask strength ex-bourbon which has similar specs, and it only confirmed those thoughts. Despite that issue, the flavour is still there in spades and the heat does dissipate after a short time. I would still recommend picking up a bottle if it does appear at any retailers as it’s a great way to try the Ballindalloch distillate without spending too much money.
This isn’t the first Ballindalloch I have tried. I did have a pour of a 2015 vintage, 46% ex-bourbon, 3600 bottle release at Glasgow whisky festival and I didn’t think much of it. Nothing bad, but nothing to write home about. That said, it was late in the day and in combination with the busy environment, after already having a few heavy hitter drams, means I won’t judge it harshly. Sat quietly at home with no distractions I reckon it would be an entirely different proposition, but I am not going to relieve myself of the best part of £90 to find out. In my view it is £50-60 whisky.
Thompson Brothers have made a habit of producing well priced blends and blended malts over the past couple of years and the quality to value ratio is usually superb. Trawling through the data of our spreadsheet which tracks all Dramface’s reviews to date, a total of twenty one single malts, blends, blended malts and grains have been reviewed from Thompson Brothers across nine different reviewers. Including scores from both the article writer and contributors there’s been a whopping eighteen scores of seven out of ten, six scores of six and one score of five. What that shows is that we have reliable high quality coming from the brothers. You could point out that we aren’t seeing anything hitting the highs of an eight, nine or ten, but I am sure that is only a matter of time and the ratio of very good seven out of ten scores is remarkable.
It’s little wonder they won best independent bottlers at the OSWA’s, despite not being as available as many others. They’re a bottler you can trust to deliver high quality when you part with your hard-earned cash.
Score: 6/10
Tried this? Share your thoughts in the comments below. RT