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Agitprop

Insignificant Single Casks

Within whisky, the single cask enjoys something akin to sacred cow status. The situation is more severe in the US, where it wouldn’t surprise me were single barrel fetishism to achieve its own Amendment to the Constitution.

I am not a single cask sycophant. I see it propounded, here and there, that they are intrinsically special, and I gnash my teeth. Individuality, purity of process, singularity of flavour – many assert that these attributes find their ultimate expressions in single casks. Leaving aside for the moment that all three strands of this argument can be challenged as a multi-refill hogshead of utter hogwash, what about a further aspect of a whisky? What about significance?

Let me be clear that single casks can be very tasty. I know a number of people bottling casks and their selections typically land in the 5-8 out of 10 scale in terms of flavour quality. However, in a world increasingly awash with delicious, thoughtfully constructed spirits, ‘quaffable’ alone does not justify the financial risk and liver outlay. My experience tells me that greatness in spirits is far more likely to have been finessed than ‘found’.

In The World Atlas of Whisky, Dave Broom contends that ‘[whisky] is about singularity (the forgotten word in single malt whisky)’. He is writing in the context of distilleries; Glencadam, Miyagikyo or Westland might produce hundreds of thousands of litres of alcohol a year but, his argument goes, only Glencadam, or Miyagikyo, or Westland – or North British, Four Roses or Hampden – endeavours to make spirit of this style, in this location, with this equipment and these people. Where there is singularity of approach, there is also significance. It is possible to meaningfully distinguish distilleries, therefore, but what about the individual casks containing their spirits?

To the human mind, ‘single’ carries much emotive power. With whisky, we can be persuaded that any one cask is as unique as we are. Sadly, the reality of the supply chain makes such faith in the sui generis nature of single casks untenable. Today, spirit from Clynelish (for argument’s sake) will have been filled into a couple of hundred impressively uniform ex-Brown Forman barrels somewhere in central Scotland. Some of those casks will end up on the books of independent bottlers. When they are individually bottled, besides different cask numbers, what makes one distinct from another?

There is an oft-repeated parable that two casks, filled on the same day and left to mature alongside each other for their entire lives, can end up tasting radically different. Totally true. However, what is far more often the case is that those two casks turn out functionally identical.

As I touch on above, even in those instances where oak does manage to throw out random flavours, this is far less interesting to me than men and women consciously shaping taste and texture. I’m a blender, writing a blog about human imagination as expressed through drinks. Of course I’m going to find conventional single casks intellectually barren. I want to know more. ‘Why does this bottling matter?’ In broader terms: ‘What does it mean?’ There are almost as many independent bottlers now as discarded face masks in the Mediterranean Sea: if everyone has single casks, they aren’t so special anymore. Any company that defaults to the position that the singular is automatically significant, or that uses ‘natural’ presentation as a selling point in and of itself, is going to disappoint me.

My advice to the indies is to impose themselves. Tell the story on the cask’s behalf. Intervene. Have you taken the spirit to higher levels of deliciousness? Can you make a statement with this release about your whisky world view? Can I connect with you, the bottler, on a philosophical level?

There are more companies going the extra mile these days, not just picking single casks but playing tunes with them. Infrequent Flyers and the SMWS are merrily re-racking spirit, often into assertive oak. Single Cask Nation are experimenting with re-introducing empty wood from their previous releases as finishing vessels for new projects, creating a chain of flavour cameos within their own SCN cinematic universe.

Decadent Drinks adds value in other ways. Yes, the bulk of what they release is single casks, but they evidently relish editorialising, enriching the space in which their bottlings live. Rather than single casks sent out into the world like isolated, perfunctory Tweets, they created threads of releases in 2021 with context, opinions and more than the occasional joke. Whether it was the trio of Ballechins to create the Spongetopia triptych, or the genius revenge tragedy that was the Glen Grant/Caperdonich dyad, Decadent Drinks weave stories by bringing whiskies into a relationship. Single casks are never lonely: they can be connected in creative, sometimes educational ways.

The one single cask I’ve actually bought a bottle of since possibly 2017, though, is last year’s Thompson Bros. 9-year-old Ben Nevis, finished in a Cromarty Brewery ex-rye ale cask. Why put my money there? I love what Phil and Simon stand for in whisky; their own Dornoch Distillery, and the whiskies they bottle independently, unfailingly reflect their geeky sensibility and no-nonsense values. The fact that their family runs a hotel in these terrifying times – one I’ve stayed at before – also compels my support.

However, this whisky stands apart from their other single cask bottlings because it embodies the collaboration of two makers from the same locality. It is a unique amalgamation of intriguing factors, both practical and creative, that gets my mental cogs turning with each glass. While it could be repeated, only this first release of 166 bottles represents the what-if/devil-may-care plunge into the unknown of genuine experimentation. The beer influence is unmistakable, the Ben Nevis mineralic fruitiness a capable foil. I don’t reach for this bottling often – it won’t go into my Top 10 Tastiest Spirits Ever – but when I do, I salute the Thompsons for creating something both truly singular and satisfyingly significant.