Annandale 6yo
2015 The Whisky Barrel | 59.7% ABV
Score: 7/10
Very Good Indeed.
TL;DR
A pleasant and unexpected opportunity
Finally, Annandale I can try
Since it came over from America a few years ago, Black Friday has gone from a single day of excellent deals to weeks of tedium and uninspiring offers.
Originally, it may have led to occasional undesirable scrums for mega-discounted products as shops opened on the day, but you did feel you were getting genuine discounts rather than the current cynical elevation of prices in the weeks before the event, which are then adjusted back to the original price and packaged to us as a saving that we should be thankful for.
Every time my inbox pinged last November, it was often yet another email promising big discounts which didn’t excite when explored further. Then one dropped in from online retailer The Whisky Barrel, and my interest was piqued. On offer were a pair of fully sherry matured, cask strength whiskies at £42, and bottled under their own label. The first was a 4 year old from Glasgow distillery, which was interesting enough in itself. But when I saw the 6 year old Annandale from a first-fill oloroso sherry cask, I realised this was a great chance to try a whisky from a new distillery, whose official releases are priced prohibitively in my opinion.
When I started off this piece by saying this is an Annandale I can finally try, I mean emotionally rather than physically. There appears to be plenty of it on the shelf to buy but the price has always put me off. At the time of writing, the cheapest bottle I can find on their website is £85.95. For that you can have a range of different cask types, and both peated (Man O’Swords) and unpeated (Man O’Words) expressions. There whiskies have been matured in STR (shaved, toasted and recharred) red wine casks, refill ex-bourbon casks or sherry hogsheads. They are all single casks bottled at cask strength, but once you factor in £6 delivery it’s more than £90 and beyond. For an entry level point into the distillery it seems excessive and I’ve been happy to spend my whisky budget elsewhere. Maybe if I had tasted it before I would consider it to be nectar worth the price tag, but I’m not paying that price to find out.
We need an official release from the distillery at 46% and priced between £45-50, which is a formula that has proved to be successful for the likes of Ardnamurchan, Raasay, Lochlea and Lindores Abbey. Annandale have the same theoretical capacity as Ardnamurchan at 500,000 litres per annum, and that figure is higher than all of the other three mentioned. Bring something to the market that people can take a punt on at a fair price and the spirit can speak for itself. That may then encourage customers to move on to the more expensive single cask releases once they feel confident they aren’t going to be disappointed with spending close to £100 on a bottle. Few on the social media channels I follow are talking about Annandale, and I’m certain price is the main factor.
Technically speaking, on lines of latitude, Annandale isn’t the most southerly distillery in Scotland. Bladnoch lays claim to that, but for anybody travelling by car from England up the M6 and on to the M74, it’ll take more than an hour longer to reach Bladnoch’s more remote location to the west. Yet, as you cross the border into Scotland, you’ll soon see the brown tourist information signs beckoning you to leave the carriageway and pay Annandale a visit. Incidentally, that Scotland approach section of the M6 must be the most picturesque in the country, as it winds through the Lake District abd is surrounded by hills that are often blanketed in a moody, atmospheric, thick clag thanks to the local climate. This theme continues as you cross the border and head north towards Glasgow. I’ve driven that way twice in the past year or so, but I’ve never gone out of my way to visit. As much as any distillery is always interesting to explore - and it looks like a particularly beautiful distillery - I don’t feel like I’ve been able to connect with Annandale in a way that would make me want to delay the final destination of my journey. I think I should correct that next time I’m up that way and book a tour.
Annandale is classed as a new distillery, with the stills fired up for the first time in 2014. However, there was a distillery on the site for the best part of a 100 years before it was closed down by owners Johnnie Walker in 1918. The new Annandale is the result of years of rebuilding and restoration work. They produce peated spirit at 45ppm and unpeated spirit.
Their product story is an interesting one. Before any spirit was produced, sensory profiling took place using approximately 60 whiskies from around Scotland to create a flavour map. Using this they could position Annandale into an unoccupied area of that map and therefore create a unique whisky. With owners David Thomson and Teresa Church being very qualified in this field and running a company called MMR Research Worldwide which specialises in sensory research, they were able to utilise a team of 12 professional sensory assessors to carry out this work. Once they’d decided what type of flavour profile they wanted for their whiskies, they needed the help of somebody who could design the plant and processes for creating it. Enter the late, great, Dr Jim Swan, whose expertise was instrumental to the success of many distilleries around the world. The Annandale website explains the desired fruity/estery character is achieved through very limited agitation of the grain bed during mashing and a unique combination of two very specific yeasts used in fermentation. This is combined with Jim’s twin spirit still concept, which utilises a 12,000 litre wash still and two 4,000 litre spirit stills in order to increase the surface area for copper contact and create a spirit with fewer impurities. I find that fascinating and shows just how much thought, time and effort has gone into Annandale.
When I ordered this bottle, all I was looking at was the whisky and the fact it comes with its own Digital Provenance Certificate or NFT (Non-Fungible Token) passed me by. I must admit the whole blockchain NFT world is alien to me and not something I have much interest in. I don’t need any sort of certificate to tell me that I own the thing that I own. I’m going to drink it, share it, and then throw the bottle away once it’s empty. Perhaps this could work well with high end Macallan and Dalmore, or Aston Martin designed Bowmore decanters, where fakery is more likely to occur, but I don’t think a young Annandale from an independent bottler would be a prime candidate for profiteering scam artists. Scanning the QR code on this bottle gives no interesting new information that we can’t already find on the bottle. You won’t see a treasure trove of whisky geekery like you would when scanning a bottle of Ardnamurchan. Hopefully the liquid in the bottle will be of more interest.
Review
Annandale 6yo 2016, The Whisky Barrel, First-fill Oloroso Sherry Butt, 59.7% ABV
£42
Nose
Toffee apple, burnt rubber and bonfire smoke, with polished mahogany, varnish and a touch of tobacco. There’s also sweet cherry and the usual dried mixed fruits we often find in this type of cask. It’s rather herbal too, with witch hazel, sage and anise.
Palate
I’m getting sweet and sour apple and raspberry initially, followed by liquorice, which is a strong flavour throughout the experience. There’s dandelion and burdock, light rubber, bitter dark chocolate, oak and leather. Ashen bonfire smoke builds as it develops, with root ginger heat, dry, flinty, earth and espresso coffee. That’s followed by a nuttiness that becomes creamy into the finish, with lingering smoke, more of the liquorice, and dried sage and rosemary herbal elements.
The Dregs
On many occasions over the years, I’ve found whiskies where the nose delivers plenty, only to be left a little underwhelmed by the palate. In this case I am finding the palate is just as good, if not better. The mix of fruit, smoke and herbal elements and the way it develops in stages on the palate is particularly notable. It’s not as sweet as some sherried drams, and I want to describe it as more grown up. It’s dark and rich, with the sweetness that is there serving to prevent those darker notes heading too much towards the bitter end of the spectrum.
Will I be investing in an official bottling of Annandale following the success of this one? Probably not. In fact, almost certainly not. As much as this has shown me the distillery is making good whisky worth exploring, it’s just too expensive when we’re currently spoilt for choice on where we spend our whisky budget.
Score: 7/10
Tried this? Share your thoughts in the comments below. RT
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