All about the Kilchoman distillery and its whiskies
Taste Guide: Madeira Cask
The first Madeira Cask Release by Kilchoman was released on 1 December 2014 exclusively for members of the Kilchoman Club. For this 3rd Club Release, two fresh Madeira casks were selected that had been filled on 11 February 2010. Anthony Wills wrote about this release: »We filled a small number of Madeira casks in early 2010 as a bit of an experiment and we are very happy with the results; the strong, robust Madeira maturation has certainly made its presence felt, that said the spirit retains a lot of the classic Kilchoman characteristics. I wanted to offer our members something they wouldn’t have tried from us before. It’s a shame we couldn’t have made more bottles available but we need to retain some stock for future releases.«
The first Madeira Cask Matured Limited Release followed a year later on 5 October 2015. Distilled at the beginning of 2011, the whisky was stored in Madeira casks for over 4 years. Bottled were 6,100 bottles with an alcohol content of 50% abv.
Since the end of 2018, Madeira Finish bottlings for different countries have followed relatively regularly, with different Madeira finishing periods ranging from 6 weeks to two years. A good twenty bottlings have been released worldwide to date, which allow Kilchoman aficionados to very well understand the Madeira cask influence on the maturation.
Several bottlings with Madeira cask content have also appeared within the Small Batch Series for selected markets, the concept of which is known to illustrate the influence of different “experimental” cask types on Kilchoman whisky.
Finally, in March 2022, the second Madeira Cask Matured Limited Release followed with an edition of 17,000 bottles. This bottling was supposed to be released in autumn 2021, but due to a shortage of empty Kilchoman bottles, the release had to be postponed to the beginning of 2022 – with the exception of some markets (e.g. Sweden), which had already been supplied before the bottle problem. This second Kilchoman Madeira Cask Matured Release is a vatting of 46 fresh Madeira Hogsheads, in which the whisky distilled in May 2016 could mature for more than 5 years.
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Kilchoman Madeira Cask Releases (finish and full maturation)
