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History In A Bottle Day 12: BenRiach 1983 KWM Cask 298 29 Year

Posted on December 12, 2022

This post is Bonus Content. It has information on one of the KWM Cask bottles that are featured on the back of our 2022 KWM Whisky Calendar box. You can find the blog post for the mini bottle for Day Twelve of our Whisky Calendar here.

by Andrew

For me, there was likely no more exciting distillery in the first part of my career than BenRiach. I love the story, whether there is any truth to it or not, of Billy going to the pub with some execs from Pernod Ricard, and walking out the owner of a distillery. This is something he has now done 3 times, most recently with GlenAllachie. The acquisition of BenRiach was an interesting one because it came with a decent parcel of casks, and an option to purchase more at a fixed price in the future. Over the decade that followed BenRiach went from an almost unknown distillery to a leader in innovation. It was also for about 5 of those years our best-selling whisky.

We have bottled about 10 KWM exclusive casks of BenRiach over the years, maybe more, it is hard to be completely confident about this. We have transitioned websites 3 times since then, and have migrated to new points of sale systems twice. Suffice it to say, we can’t look back on our 30 years of sales data with 100% confidence.

Of the many BenRiach casks we bottled, three stand out for me. Our first ever BenRiach bottling was a 15-year-old matured in a Madeira Hogshead. It was a gorgeous fruity whisky with loads of decadent spice. Then there was the 18-year-old peated BenRiach distilled in 1994 and finished in virgin oak… it was an unapologetic beast. The third, a 1983 vintage BenRiach, was without question the best, and IMHO one of the top 5 whiskies we have ever bottled. There were a number of excellent 1983 vintage whiskies bottled by BenRiach. It is one of those parcels, like GlenDronach 1972, Bowmore 1964, or Ardbeg 1974 that for whatever reason just happen to have been exceptional.

Matured 29 years in a Hogshead cask, likely refill, the whisky was bottled after 29 years at a cask strength of 44.2%. That low ABV might be part of the recipe for success here. This was a whisky jam-packed with the sort of tropical fruit notes that only time, a tired old cask, and a healthy dose of luck seem to create.

BenRiach 1983 KWM Cask 298 29 Year

Billy Walker's Tasting Note

Nose: soft vanilla and gentle cinnamon give a traditional Speyside oak complexity.

Palate: candied fruits and a honeyed sweetness roll to a crisp, elegant barley-sugar finish.
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KWM 2022 Whisky Calendar Day 11: Boutique-y Speyburn 10-Year Batch 3

Posted on December 11, 2022

BONUS CONTENT: Andrew's write-up for today is on another of our past GlenDronach KWM Casks - this time a 1993 20-Year-Old. Read about this sherry bomb here!

by Evan

After two days with peated whisk(e)y in a row, some of you might be clamouring for a change. Or, I suppose, some of you may want to keep riding the peat train straight through to Day 25. No matter what, somebody will end up disappointed. Hopefully, most of us are excited to dive into the bottle behind Door Number Eleven. Today's whisky is the Boutique-y Speyburn 10-Year Batch 3!

This is our third mini bottle from That Boutique-y Whisky Company so far for the 2022 KWM Whisky Calendar. As with the other two, Andrew, and Dave Worthington of That Boutique-y Whisky Company, have collaborated on a video, where they talk about the label and taste the whisky. You can find that video on YouTube here.

This also marks the is the first time we have seen Speyburn Distillery in our Calendar since 2020, when the Speyburn 10-Year-Old was behind Door Number Five.

While it may be a bit of an unknown to many of us, Speyburn apparently sells as much single malt globally as Glengoyne and GlenDronach. While neither of those two brands are massive by any means, they are well-known by many Single Malt Scotch enthusiasts.

The distillery is in a bit of a tough spot when it comes to being noticed, you see. Speyburn is owned by Inverhouse Distillers/Thai Beverages. Inverhouse also owns are the more famed Old Pulteney and well-respected Knockdhu (bottled as AnCnoc) and Balblair. Though Speyburn is capable of producing more spirit annually than any two of these distilleries combined, each of the other brands in the Inverhouse single malt portfolio has more cache with whisky geeks, leaving Speyburn overshadowed when it comes to name recognition.

The Speyburn core range of Single Malt is worth giving a try when you can. The range begins with the no-age statement Braden Orach. We will be tasting the 10 Year today, but there are also 15 and 18-year-old expressions - both of which lean more into sherry cask influence in comparison. Beyond those, there is a 25-year-old as well.

Enough about the bottles for the moment. Let's talk about the distillery itself. Speyburn Distillery dates back to 1897 when it was founded by a family that also happened to own Tobermory Distillery at the time. Speyburn was a modern distillery at the time of its inception and was designed by famous architect Charles Doig.

Another thing that made it modern was a new version of malting the barley. Instead of using the tried-and-true floor maltings, Speyburn Distillery was the first to employ a newfangled technology for this process called drum malting. Drum malting uses a large cylinder (or drum) t...

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History In A Bottle Day 11: Glendronach 1993 KWM Cask 1625

Posted on December 12, 2022

This post is Bonus Content. It has information on one of the KWM Cask bottles that are featured on the back of our 2022 KWM Whisky Calendar box. You can find the blog post for the mini bottle for Day Eleven of our Whisky Calendar here.

by Andrew

Working from memory, GlenDronach is the third most bottled distillery when it comes to KWM-exclusive casks, second only to Arran and BenRiach. I remember that we bottled about 10 GlenDronach casks over the years, but it will take some serious sleuthing to confirm that… A project for another day.

Why did we bottle so many casks of GlenDronach? Because the whisky under the stewardship of Billy Walker was excellent, and for a while at least, really good value. This particular cask was an Oloroso Sherry Butt, Cask 1625 to be specific, yielded nearly 500 bottles and it held its strength reasonably well too at 57.5%. It is scoring nearly 90pts on Whiskybase even after all these years.

Trigger warning, the bottle price was $200… but keep in mind this was 2014!

Glendronach 1993 KWM Cask 1625

Tasting Note by Billy Walker

Nose: A delightful balance of sweet and spice. Sultanas and yellow plums warmed by touches of ginger, cinnamon and candied peel. Appearance: Polished cherry wood.

Palate: Crisp oak spices in balance with rich plum juice and barley-dusted stewed apples. Gentle clove and touches of earthy nutmeg add ever-changing depth and roundness to the long finish.

Andrew Ferguson

Owner

Kensington Wine Market
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KWM Casks @Home Virtual Tasting Sample Set - Batch 1

Posted on December 12, 2025

by Evan

Welcome! If you are reading this, you or someone you may have purchased a Virtual Tasting Kit from Kensington Wine Market with a QR Code on it that linked to this blog post.

The tasting lineup is made up of the six 25ml whisky samples that you hopefully have in front of you. The order we suggest for this tasting is as follows.

Bruichladdich 2010 KWM Cask 2652

Boutique-y Clynelish 20-Year KWM Cask

Glenfarclas 21-Year KWM Cask Strength #2

Tomatin 2006 KWM Cask 33306

Compass Box KWM 30th Anniversary Blend

Berrys Tobermory 2008 KWM Cask

Here is the YouTube Video Link if you want to follow along with Andrew, Harmony, and Evan as you work your way through the tasting kit!

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KWM 2022 Whisky Calendar Day 10: Kilchoman Sanaig

Posted on December 10, 2022

BONUS CONTENT: Read Andrew's write-up on two of our many Arran KWM Casks here!

by Evan

We have eschewed more established brands and styles for the past few days in the 2022 KWM Whisky Calendar. If you have purchased any of our calendars in years past, Door Number 10 may have a more familiar distillery for you to return to. Today’s whisky is the Kilchoman Sanaig.

Kilchoman Distillery has to be one of our most featured whisky producers through the nine iterations of the KWM Whisky Calendar.

Enough with the wild and possibly inaccurate numbers. Want to know a little more about Kilchoman Distillery? Well then, I am happy to accommodate!

Kilchoman Distillery was founded waaaaay back in... 2005. It is currently the youngest distillery on Islay to produce Whisky - and will remain that way until the younger Ardnahoe Distillery (which started producing its first spirit in October of 2018) has its first whisky release. Kilchoman was founded by Anthony Wills and resides on Rockside Farm on Islay. It is the only farm distillery on Islay, and one of the only Islay that is not located right on the shores of the island. Kilchoman's nearest distillery neighbours are Bruichladdich, which is a 15-minute drive to the east and Bowmore, which is a 25-minute drive to the east.

Like a majority of the nine operating distilleries on Islay, Kilchoman focuses on mashing and distilling peated malt. Much of the distillery's malted barley needs are sourced from the Port Ellen Maltings plant which is about a 40-minute drive to the east and south along the A846 road. Kilchoman sources malted barley peated to the same specification as Ardbeg, which is around 50 ppm.

The distillery also operates its own floor maltings which account for a small portion of its spirit production. The barley used for the floor maltings comes from their own Rockside Farm, making Kilchoman one of the only Scottish Distilleries capable of doing batches that are entirely grain to glass. These releases are often bottled under the 100% Islay moniker and their own floor maltings are peated to 'only' 20 ppm or so.

So: onto the elephant in the room. The Kilchoman Sanaig, which takes its name from an inlet on Islay's Atlantic Coast side, was featured in a previous KWM Whisky Calendar. That was six years ago, way back on Day Two of our 2016 KWM Whisky Calendar. You can read Andrew’s take on the whisky in his notes there.

Will his notes hold up? As a younger and relatively small distillery, Kilchoman may be prone to batch variation. The whisky staff at KWM were surprised by this near the beginning of Covid when we noticed a rather large change in the colour of the whisky in full-sized bottles of the Kilchoman Sanaig – all of a sudden the liquid ...

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