New in the Distillery Shop: New Oak Single Cask Finish 234/2018

And once again, we can announce a new exclusive bottling for the Kilchoman Distillery Shop: a new oak finish single cask has been available there since 19 September 2024. This is the first time that Kilchoman has released a virgin oak finish, referred to here as a new oak finish.

The whisky was first matured for more than five years in a fresh STR cask (shaved, toasted & re-charred ex-Red wine Hogshead) and then finished for over a year in a new cask made of ‘Carpathian oak’, i.e. European oak from the Carpathians.

Anthony Wills is, at least with regard to Kilchoman whisky, not a fan of virgin oak maturation, as he is of the understandable opinion that the very light-bodied Kilchoman distillate would quickly be dominated by the oak and resin tones of a newly coopered cask. Always keen to experiment, he has nevertheless been trying out finishing in virgin oak on a few casks since March 2023, interestingly not with whisky that had previously been aged in bourbon barrels but in STR casks. We can taste the first result of these experiments here.

Incidentally, we at Kilchomania were so enthusiastic about this – I was able to taste one of these casks in June 2024 together with Anthony Wills and Robin Bignal at the Kilchoman warehouse and brought a sample of it to the Kilchomania Tasting Panel – that our next Kilchomania.com release, scheduled for later this year, will be a bottling of one of these rare STR cask matured / New Oak Finish casks.

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Cask No.: 234/2018

Cask type: 1st Fill STR Cask, Virgin Oak Finish

Date Filled: 27.3.2018

Date Bottled: 8.7.2024

Age: 6 yo

Strength: 57,2 % abv

Level of Phenols in malted barley: 50 ppm

Number of bottles: 287

Bottle volume: 0,7 l

Barcode: 5 060210 707996

Distribution: Distillery Shop Exclusive

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