Aberfeldy 21 Yr Previous Malbec Cask End is the primary partnership of its type for the distillery, combining malt grasp Stephanie Macleod and winemaker Daniel Pi’s expertise to pick out the actual casks used for ending.
At a tasting Drinks Worldwide attended on the model’s dwelling in Scotland, Macleod mentioned it was all the time “irritating that we might by no means disclose the winery or the vineyard that supplied the casks we used as a result of we didn’t have a partnership with them, so we all the time yearned for a vineyard that we might companion with.”
Distilled on 14 November 2021 and matured for over twenty years in Sherry and Bourbon re-fill barrels and hogsheads, the restricted version Aberfeldy 21 Yr Previous is then completed for roughly eight months in Finca Ambrosia’s Malbec French Oak wine casks.
“We now have been on a journey with ending our whisky in various kinds of casks,” Macleod added. “A number of years in the past we began with purple wine casks. Once I first took on the position of grasp blender in 2006, a yr later we determined to take a threat and purchase some wine casks, resembling Madeira and another sorts, to do some experiments with out anybody else figuring out.
“We had been actually stunned to see the impact these casks had on our whisky, and a variety of years later we then began to bottle them. That was actually what gave us the thought to have the distinctive cask vary, so we then began to take a look at French purple wines after which moved to Italy with our Tuscan casks,” Macleod continued.
For this partnership, Macleod added she was “barely apprehensive with the casks coming all the best way from Argentina to Scotland, there’s all the time a fear they may spoil on the journey. As with all of the casks we obtain, we nosed them and had been splendidly stunned with how contemporary and vibrant they had been. We determined to go along with the Aberfeldy 21 Yr Previous as a result of it’s a whisky the place the wooden has an affect however doesn’t dominate the character, so it’s very approachable.
“Whisky is all the time difficult as a result of it’s all the time shifting, the demand isn’t because it’s written down on paper, there’s all the time one thing that can change it and can change the dynamics of our mixing,” Macleod continued.
The Finca Ambrosia property is situated on the foothills of the Andes Mountains at an altitude of 1250m. The ending casks supplied to Aberfeldy beforehand held Finca Ambrosia’s Viña Unica, an oaked purple wine that has spent 15 months in used French oak barrels.
Aberfeldy 21 Yr Previous Malbec Cask End is bottled at 46% abv, is non-chill filtered and priced at rrp £230, accessible direct from the distillery store and in choose world markets.
