Sunset Over Loch Indaal | 59.3% ABV

Finish up

I recently renewed my Scotch Malt Whisky Society membership. I’m not here to sell you on it as I know that the pros and cons don’t necessarily work out for everyone. Yet for me, membership continues to be worth the experience I get in return. 

A big part of my decision was I’m lucky enough to live close to a SMWS venue, which means I can pop in for a dram or two after work in the evening, or on the weekend.  If you want to join, let me know as if I refer a friend I get a free bottle. In the interest of full transparency, I promise it will be swiftly donated to Dramface Labs for immediate scientific analysis. 

I think another reason I’ve renewed is the place I am in my whisky journey. Having now tried many expressions from core ranges, I now find myself seeking out indie bottlings. What variations, tweaks, accidents, and deviations are some of my favourite malts capable of? On the other hand, I still feel earlier in my journey than many others (having only gone deep into the whisky-hole during the dark days of lockdown). I simply want to expose my palate and pursue the flavour chase however I can: Bottles if I really want them, but also just drams to try without having to commit to a full bottle. So for me, the SMWS continues to tick the boxes I’m interested in to help me bushwhack my way through the thicket of endless new bottles that we’re all faced with.  

That said, SMWS has its fans and critics alike. I’ve followed recent conversations about the increasing prices of everything, and while the SMWS has certainly raised prices in the last few months, considering some recent outturns of other indie bottlers, it seems that like-for-like the Society continues to be competitive on many bottles of interest. Sure, they’ll crank up the price on something they know will be in high demand – a Bruichladdich, for example – but many other bottles are more competitive. But on the other hand, not many other indie bottlers charge you an initial membership fee for the privilege of purchasing their bottles. The SMWS probably has an extensive warehouse full of casks from distilleries rarely bottled as single malts or by other indies, and this stock also allows for some cask experimentation that other smaller bottlers may not be able to afford.

Which leads me to today’s topic of cask finishing. In the history of whisky, cask finishing is a fairly recent innovation. Many Dramface readers will likely know the broad outlines of how finishing came to be a thing in single malt: About how in the 1980s David Stewart of Balvenie had the idea of taking a traditionally bourbon cask-matured spirit but before bottling transferred into ex-sherry butts to see what happened. It was bottled as Balvenie Classic, but eventually came to be today’s Balvenie Double Wood. Around the same other distilleries such as Glenmorangie also began experimenting with cask finishes. Today, this is common practice.  

Cask finishing is a secondary maturation meant to create variations on a house style. If your standard core range release represents the intended baseline distillery style, then finishing it in a different cask for a few months or years can create something different, tasty, and interesting. There’s a basic rule-of-thumb that guides current finishing practice: the finishing cask and the spirit have to complement each other for things to turn out well. 

A first-fill port cask, for example, will likely overpower a lighter spirit with the result being something more like whisky-flavoured port than whisky with an extra interesting layer of subtle port influence. This is precisely why some finishes work better than others. Getting the balance right between spirit and cask is a very tricky proposition, and not all distilleries or indie bottlers get it right all of the time. A cask finish should ideally contribute extra dimensions of depth, interest, texture, and taste that the house style does not offer. A finish should raise the whisky up to something special or interesting, not drag it down into a confused, disjointed experience. Finish up, not down.  

In lockdown during a Zoom tasting, I remember an indie Caol Ila that was finished in a port cask. It was the first time I saw and tasted for myself what I had read others say about their scepticism towards finishes. This poor Caol Ila was a pale manifestation of that gorgeous dependable spirit that I had tried several expressions of. There was a sheen of port overlaying the smoky, briny spirit but with no integration, no marriage of spirit and cask. As a result, it was a disjointed tasting experience. It somehow tasted like two different drinks in one glass. This was definitely not finished ‘up’, but unfortunately brought down either by careless cask management or simply an experiment that didn’t turn out quite right.  

The Scotch Malt Whisky Society does a lot of finishes. While I’ve found many of them enjoyable, their cask management often leads to questions about the real intentions behind their many finishes. It’s not unusual to see a 25 or 30 year old whisky, having been sleeping gently in an ex-bourbon cask for a quarter century, to then be rushed into an ex-oloroso sherry cask for a year or two before bottling. Why? There’s speculation that such finishes, far from intending to add depth and complexity, are actually masking some poor or inactive initial cask maturation. I have absolutely no intel on this, but only see the monthly outturns and am sometimes left wondering about the purpose of all the finishing. SMWS, to be fair, are far from the only indie that has focused heavily on finishing.

SMWS tells us that this Society cask 10.215 (or Bunnahabhain, for those of you familiar with the codes) was initially matured for 11 years in an ex-bourbon cask before being transferred to a first-fill oloroso sherry hogshead.

Review

SMWS 20.215, Bunnahabhain 13yo, 2021 Release, Sunset Over Loch Indaal, 59.3% ABV
£79, sold out.

Nose

Plums, dark chocolate and spices. The big ABV warns you on the nose to proceed slowly. A faint salt-spray quality. Very big but very nice.

Palate

Something like coastal, rocky saltiness with oloroso sherry waves lapping at the shore. The bottle tasting notes are spot-on here (perhaps the power of suggestion?) with the “chalky salinity,” walnuts, rum, and raisins. Dark chocolate and plums again. Big ABV hit of spice, but wonderfully coating mouthfeel and texture. Cinnamon, boozy honey, and vanilla melted together.

The Dregs

This is a finish that works wonderfully. I haven’t tasted any bourbon-only cask matured Bunnahabhain, and so technically don’t have much baseline for what this finish actually contributes beyond the initial maturation. But, I don’t think we need to have tasted an example of the initially matured spirit to enjoy what a finish can bring to a whisky. You can taste here what the initial cask contributed, and this is precisely how you can tell if a finish has been successful. 

You can’t miss the oloroso, but the coastal-pebble-saltiness comes through from both the spirit and the initial bourbon cask. It’s true that Bunnahabhain is known as a sherried malt, and so yet another sherried Bunna might not seem to be of interest.  Yet, this is a good one. Bunnahabhain is actually quite a substantial spirit, and so even with this fairly active secondary cask it holds up in a great way. It’s one of those marriages comprised of two dominant personalities that you think might lead to constant confrontation, but instead the two parties respect each other enough to share the limelight.

Score: 7/10

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

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