Bottlings
Our Bottlings
We chose our first casks for bottling in early 2019. Our bottlings are now available in our shop as well as from specialist whisky stockists, and we will strive to continuously release new whisky, cognac, and bourbon as we find special ones. All currently available bottlings can be found here.
We do not take shortcuts, and everything we do, from meticulous cask selection to the design and over-analytical thought process behind our bottle and cork choices, is designed to maximize the pleasure that we, as drinkers, derive from our bottlings.
Feel free to join the mailing list on our home page to be kept up-to-date with our forthcoming releases.
In the meantime, below you can find some information about our approach and the different spirits we offer.
Malt Whisky
Our passion is for whisky, and this is where our journey and this project began.
Our preferred style is (ideally tropical) fruit forward, bourbon cask whiskies that let the spirit shine. However, we also love clean (unsulphured) sherry cask whiskies, where the sherry accentuates the spirit without completely overwhelming it.
In our experience, there is no shortcut for age, and the very best whiskies of all time have matured slowly, often in inactive refill casks, for decades. With very few exceptions, great complexity only comes with time. While we strive to find such casks, we only want to bottle whisky where the current price/quality ratio is justified, and will therefore also bottle exceptional younger whisky from first fill casks, if we believe the bottling to deliver great pleasure for the price.
While we use certain criteria to help us narrow down what we look for, we do not limit ourselves to a single style of whisky, but instead seek whisky that we consider to be great, no matter the age, style, or cask type.
Whiskey: Bourbon
While we generally prefer the profile of single malt over other grain whiskies, we have come across some spectacular bourbons that fit our prefered taste profile as well. What makes these bottlings different is that these bourbons have spent several years aging in Kentucky, where the high heat and temperature changes make for very exctractive aging, before moving the entire casks to Scotland for a cooler, gentler aging in order to build complexity for several more years. This means that these bourbons maintain their corn-based sweetness, while gaining a complexity that we normally associate with single malt whiskies.
Cognac
On our journey to find quality products for whisky lovers, our biggest discovery was a treasure trove of great casks in the world of old cognac.
While we knew cognac to be a high-quality product, the majority of cognac that people have tried comes from a handful of large producers, who generally adulterate their fantastic base spirit through the addition of sugar, caramel colour, and boisé, or wood concentrate. This diluted, homogenized cognac is then "premiumised" through expensive marketing and fancy packaging.
What we discovered has nothing to do with the above. We found small producers and distributers whose cognac, straight from the cask, at cask strength and without any additives, reminds us irrevocably of the golden 1960s of the whisky world, when the best Single Malt Scotch Whiskys were produced. We discovered a Petite Champagne cognac from 1967, whose rancio notes remind us of the tropical fruit notes in 1960s Bowmore. We discovered ultra concentrated 40 year old Grand Champagne cognac, which reminds us of cask-strength, sherried 1950s Glen Grant or even Macallan. We discovered a 1965 Borderies cognac, whose intense notes of cassis can make a blind-taster think it was an old Irish Whiskey.
We do not know how long it will be before these old, incredible cognacs will all be blended away or bottled, and the world of cognac will begin to resemble the world of whisky. But we will make the most of these treasures in the meantime.
A note on ages and vintages: officially stated vintages on cognac have only been allowed since the late 1980s, and are strictly regulated. Therefore most bottlings of cognac will strongly hint at the age and the year of distillation, without stating "Vintage 1967" on the bottle.
Pineau des Charentes
Pineau des Charentes is our only non-spirit bottling. It is a fortified wine made in the same region as cognac, and usually has an abv between 17% and 18%.
Pineau des Charentes is made by taking grape must (juice) from the same grapes that are used to make cognac, and "fortifying" this through the addition of eau-de-vie, or the same spirit that, when aged, turns into cognac. This mixture of grape must and eau-de-vie is then aged in casks that were previously used to age cognac.
A good Pineau des Charentes has great complexity as well as good acidity to balance out its natural sweetness. It should be served chilled, and can last for weeks once opened.
We decided to bottle Pineau des Charentes because it has tremendous complexity and because it is wonderful to enjoy during the hotter months of the year, when cask strength whiskies may not be as appealing. Our Sélection Pineau can be served as the ideal apéritif, used to refine a cocktail, or paired with food, particularly with foie gras. Our even more complex Très Vieux Pineau has enough body and complexity to be enjoyed with a cigar or makes the ideal digestiv for a contemplative evening.
We have travelled throughout the Charentes and tried close to one hundred different Pineau before settling on what we believe to be the best producer and the two superlative bottlings.