Taste Guide: Oloroso Sherry Cask

Oloroso Sherry casks are, as is generally known, the second most frequently used casks for maturing whisky in Scotland after ex-Bourbon casks. Kilchoman matures around 30% of its annual production in these casks.

The exclusive Kilchoman Sherry cask supplier is the renowned Bodega José y Miguel Martín from Jerez in Spain, which specialises in the production of Sherry casks for the Scotch whisky industry.

The importance of Oloroso casks for the Kilchoman distillerie became apparent very early on. The Kilchoman Inaugural Release, the first Kilchoman whisky to be launched on the market in 2009 at the then completely unusual age of 3 years, already had an Oloroso Sherry finish of 5 weeks. This gave the very young whisky more complexity and depth and was certainly one of the secrets of its success. The next two Kilchoman Limited Releases also followed this concept, before a pure Bourbon cask maturation was ventured into for the first time with the Summer 2010 Release.

The addition of Sherry casks in batches with Bourbon casks is a key element of whisky production at Kilchoman to this day, as a blend of Bourbon and Sherry casks is almost always used, especially for bottlings aimed at a wider public.

Even though Anthony Wills is an avowed fan of full Bourbon cask maturation, there is still not a single consistently released General or Limited Release with pure bourbon cask maturation. Over the years, Anthony Wills has experimented with various Bourbon/Sherry cask ratios, with a proportion of around 10% Oloroso Sherry proving to be ideal. It is not without reason that this is exactly the proportion of Sherry casks in Kilchoman’s standard whisky Machir Bay.

But now to whisky matured exclusively in Oloroso sherry casks. Kilchoman released its first Sherry Cask Limited Release in 2012 and since its second edition in 2013, it has been named after Loch Gorm, a lake near the distillery.
The annual spring bottling is undoubtedly one of the best-known and most popular Kilchoman releases. The individual editions differ slightly from year to year in the composition of the casks used. With two exceptions at the beginning of the series, when 250 litre hogsheads were also used, only the 500 litre Oloroso Sherry butts are used, but of different ages and different numbers of first fill and refill casks.
From 2012 to 2020, the Sherry butts vatted for Loch Gorm were also always one year older on average, meaning that the increasing maturation of Kilchoman whisky in Sherry casks could be tracked very well here. This ageing trend has been frozen since the beginning of the 2020s. Since then, the aim has been to achieve a blend in which the Sherry tones do not dominate the Kilchoman distillery character, but rather form a harmonious synthesis, by using casks that are around 8 to 13 years old.

Named after a rocky bay near the distillery, Sanaig is Kilchoman’s second important Oloroso Sherry cask bottling. After being marketed as a limited edition in 2015 only in Belgium, Germany, France and the Netherlands, Kilchoman made it its second permanently available bottling (“General Release”) after Machir Bay in 2016.

Compared to the Machir Bay, the Sanaig contains a significantly higher proportion of Sherry casks. It consists of approx. 70% whisky matured in Oloroso sherry casks and approx. 30% in bourbon casks. In contrast to Loch Gorm, however, the smaller Sherry hogsheads are predominantly used here. The significantly larger surface area of these casks in relation to their volume very quickly gives the whisky a distinct Sherry flavour and a dark colour. In contrast, whisky matured in Sherry butts over the years is much more balanced and complex.
The whisky, which is just 5 years old, quickly became a Kilchoman bestseller. This increased even further when the so-called “dark batches” were released at the end of 2019 for the first time, which are significantly darker in colour than the previous “normal” batches, even darker than a Loch Gorm. The difference in colour was initially just a coincidence of some of the particularly colour-active Sherry casks used in these batches; in terms of taste, the difference to the lighter batches is minimal. However, it very quickly became apparent that the “dark batches” sold significantly better than the lighter variants; unfortunately, the whisky world still ticks in such a way that dark colour promises quality and age.
Kilchoman has therefore been trying to achieve a consistently darker colour ever since and asked Bodega José y Miguel Martín to supply the corresponding active casks. How exactly the company achieves this is a secret, but according to Anthony Wills it should not be a problem. As a whisky lover who was socialised with Paxarette Macallans in the past – and loved them – I will spare myself a continuation of the critical discussions on questions such as how “moist” a Sherry cask may still be in order to comply with SWA regulations and similar speculations…

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There is not enough space here to present the large number of single cask bottlings of Kilchoman whiskies matured or finished in Oloroso Sherry casks, and it would quickly become very confusing. Therefore, only a few outstanding and/or important examples should be mentioned here.

The first single cask bottlings of Oloroso Sherry casks were released at the end of 2010 in Denmark, Germany, France and Japan. These were just 3 and 4 years old respectively, but already gave an indication that the Kilchoman distillate would also harmonise well with this type of cask. These first releases have since been followed by more than 100 others in all Kilchoman sales markets worldwide, setting new age records from year to year until 2023 (see below), when the currently oldest 16-year-old bottling was released.

A particularly outstanding example of the Sherry cask maturations released in the early years is the bottling of Sherry butt 429/2009 for The Nectar in Belgium, which was released at the end of 2014. The whisky, which is just 5 years old, impresses with its amazingly complex flavours and already appears very balanced.

The Fèis Ìle 2016 Release, a bottling of Oloroso Sherry Butt 429/2007 released on 16 May 2016, can be considered an example of a whisky where the Sherry cask influence clearly dominates and completely masks the distillery character. Kilchoman always endeavours to avoid too much cask influence, especially with its Sherry cask bottlings. But this whisky, which is reminiscent of a GlenDronach Parliament, also represents a kind of benchmark and should be tasted by every Kilchoman fan.

In our opinion, the best Kilchoman Sherry cask bottling to date, because it is the most complex and well-balanced, is the 10th exclusive edition for members of the Kilchoman Club, which was released on 12 December 2021. It is a small batch of three Oloroso sherry casks matured for almost 13 years. This bottling owes its outstanding quality not only to its age, but obviously also to its special history. Distilled in December 2008, the whisky initially matured in Oloroso Sherry butts. As Anthony Wills was not satisfied with its development in 2016, he decided to have it decanted into three refill Oloroso hogsheads. Five years later, the whisky was then at the peak of its flavour development and was bottled in November 2021.

On 1 June, the Kilchoman Open Day of Fèis Ìle 2023, Kilchoman released a 16-year-old Oloroso Sherry cask bottling of cask no. 334/2006. This was an absolute rarity not only because of its age, as it was the penultimate sherry butt of 2006 still available at that time. Sixteen and a half years of maturation in a fresh Oloroso Sherry butt resulted in a whisky with outstanding Sherry notes, which also appears very complex and balanced and still clearly reveals the Kilchoman distillery character.

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