A Taste of Scotland – The Whisky Boys First Scotch Blend
It was late November last year when Nicola and I with the family had a holiday in Las Vegas.
At this time in Vegas the rodeo championships were on and in the Sands Expo there was a fair which had stands catering to all things cowboy, row upon row of cow hides, cowboy boots and hats, all things for riding and camping by the hundreds of exhibitors. We must have spent at least five hours wandering around this huge hall and did not manage to see everything.
One stand we did come across was an exhibitor Deep South Barrels who were selling mini casks, all were lightly toasted virgin American oak. So Nicola and I decided to buy two 3 litre casks to take home and later decide what plans we might have for them.
Around early January we filled the casks with water to ensure that there were no leaks, so both casks were tight and leak free.
Now the seasoning begins, in Nicola’s cask we used about a litre of bourbon and in my cask we put in a litre of Pedro Ximenez we let the casks rest and turned them weekly to ensure an even seasoning of the whole cask.
Nicolas cask after only a couple of months the bourbon had gone, not by a leak but the cask sooked in all the liquid. The other PX seasoned cask was more successful and when we decided to empty the sherry I managed to get approx. 500cl from the cask.
It is now mid October and Nicola and I sat down and chatted about what to put into the PX cask. The cask had now held the PX for approx. 9 months. We discounted new make spirit and some of the bland supermarket malts. In the end we looked through our cupboards and boxes and found that we had a load of single cask, cask strength samples from distilleries throughout Scotland. The decision was made use the majority of our samples.
Here is a list of what went into our cask approx. 4cl from each sample bottle :-
- 3 Speyside
- 3 Island
- 8 Highland
- 4 Campbeltown
- 2 Islay
- 21 Single Grains
Finally to top the cask up we used some Scotch Malt Whisky Society single cask, single malt from the Mortlach Distillery on Speyside.
So our First Scotch Blend is now continuing to mature, being all single cask, cask strength.
Now the waiting begins, our plan is that on the 14th of each month we will take a tiny sample to taste. When we think it has reached it’s peak we will bottle about 2 litres. then we will then top up the cask with more single cask, cask strength Whiskies.
Let our little adventure begin, we may also take a few samples to let our Whisky buddies have a wee sip and give us their thoughts and opinions.