Taste Guide: Red Wine Casks

Compared to other cask types, bottlings of Kilchoman whiskies matured in Red Wine casks are rather rare. Of the over 1000 different bottlings Kilchoman has released since 2009, to date only five have been Red Wine cask matured and a dozen Red Wine finishes. This is in particularly striking contrast to STR casks (Shaved, Toasted & Re-charred ex-Red Wine Casks), which are among the most successful of the “experimental cask types” used by Kilchoman and the most appreciated by Anthony Wills. (STR casks have their own section in the Kilchoman flavour guide).

This may also have something to do with the difficult beginnings that Anthony Wills occasionally reported on. The first Red Wine casks from a well-known French red wine region, bottled on a trial basis back in 2009, developed extremely poorly. Even after many years, the whisky did not acquire a reasonable structure. After more than 10 years of maturation – an incredibly long period of time in the early years of Kilchoman – one of the casks was then bottled for the Chinese market, while a second was finished for two years in an Oloroso sherry cask after more than ten years of storage in order to somehow save it. This extremely unusual Red Wine cask maturation / Sherry finishing was then bottled for the Japanese market.

The Red Wine barrels from Portugal’s Douro Valley, which were filled from 2012 onwards, performed much better. Kilchoman’s “home cooperage” Diaz, which supplies them with numerous types of casks such as Port, Madeira and STR, is located in Portugal, so a trial with Portuguese Red Wine casks was an obvious choice. The Kilchoman whisky developed much better in these casks, in which the full-bodied Portuguese Red Wines had previously been matured.

The “Red Wine Cask Matured Limited Edition” was then released in October 2017. Distilled in 2012, the whisky was matured for five years in Red Wine casks from Portugal’s Douro Valley. 20 casks were filled for this release, resulting in a yield of just under 7,000 bottles at 50% abv.

This was followed in 2018 by six Douro Valley Red Wine cask finishings for various markets worldwide.

In the recent past, Anthony Wills has emphasised several times that Kilchoman would like to focus more on “provenance” in the wine casks used for maturing whisky in the future. In other words, instead of using “anonymous” Sauternes or Red Wine casks, the exact origin, grape variety and producer should be stated. However, he also emphasised that it is not easy to establish close contacts with various wineries instead of buying the casks from a cooperage as was previously the case.

Kilchoman fans were able to taste the first result of these efforts in 2021. The Dutch online spirits retailer DrankDozijn (D12) released a Pinot Noir Cask Finish Small Batch on 26 November 2021. This was a vatting of two fresh bourbon barrels, in which the whisky was matured for over seven years before being finished for six months in Pinot Noir casks from the Palatinate wine house Franz Hahn.

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The rather unusual bottling of a “Red Wine cask marriage” should also be discussed here (and not in the STR cask chapter, where this would also be possible).
In August 2020, Kilchoman installed two vatting tanks (containers for marrying larger whisky releases) made by the Dias cooperage for maturation experiments, which are not made of stainless steel like the standard ones used, but of wooden staves from former Portuguese Red Wine casks.
The inner surface was shaved, toasted and re-charred, the process is very similar to that used in the production of STR casks. The two vats were charred to different degrees (char level 2 and 3), which should have a slightly different impact on the whisky stored in them.
The two vats, each holding 6,000 litres, were then filled with the contents of 19 fresh ex-bourbon barrels from 2014.
After two years of marrying, the contents of both tanks were bottled in October 2022 under the name Casado (Portuguese for marriage) with a run of 12,900 bottles. The bottling led to a warning from the SWA on the very day of release. Although Kilchoman had not counted the time of marrying as a maturation period, as required by the SWA guidelines, and thus thought it was on the safe side, the unusually long storage in wooden containers with the declared aim of achieving a change in taste was (understandably) classified by the SWA as maturation and not as vatting – and, as is well known, this may only take place in oak casks with a maximum volume of 700 litres…

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Anthony Wills, Kilchoman Founder & Managing Director with the Red Wine vats. Picture by Kilchoman Distillery

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Previous Red Wine cask bottlings from Kilchoman (full maturation and finish):

ReleaseCask No.FilledBottledMaturation
Single Red Wine Cask for K&L Wine Merchants470/201226.07.201220.01.2017Full maturation: over 4 years in a Cabernet Sauvignon cask from Provence, France
Red Wine Cask Matured Release 201203.10.2017Full maturation: 5 years in Douro Valley Red Wine casks from Portugal
Single Red Wine Cask for The Distillery Shop497/201202.08.201231.05.2018Full maturation: over 5 years in a Red Wine cask
Red Wine Matured Single Cask for SMCC313/2009 25.06.2009 07.03.2020 Full maturation: over 10 years in a french Red Wine cask
Sherry Single Cask Finish for Shamrock´s 12th anniversary314/200925.06.200912.08.202110 years in a french Red Wine cask / Sherry cask finish for 2 years
Red Wine Finish Single Cask for The Nectar Belgium171/201111.04.201103.08.2018Finish: 5 months in a Douro Valley Red Wine cask
Single Red Wine Finish Cask for Drinks by the Dram405/201205.07.201208.08.2018Finish: 5 months in a Douro Valley Red Wine cask
Single Red Wine Finish Cask for Gold Medal Marketing Inc. Canada408/201205.07.201221.08.2018Finish in a Douro Valley Red Wine Cask
Red Wine Finish Single Cask – Gold Polish Autumn173/201107.04.201128.09.2018Finish: 6 months in a Douro Valley Red Wine Cask
Red Wine Finish Single Cask for Ullrich Selection404/201205.07.201228.10.2018Finish: 6 months in a Douro Valley Red Wine Cask
Red Wine Finish Single Cask for Whisk-e Ltd, Japan170/201107.04.201119.12.2018Finish in a Douro Valley Red Wine Cask
Red Wine Finish Single Cask (Founders Cask #3: Peter Wills)265/201217.05.201227.11.2020Finish: over 12 months in a Red Wine Cask
Pinot Noir Finish Small Batch for DrankDozijn850 & 851/201304.12.201304.10.2021Finish: 6 months in a Pinot Noir cask from Weinhaus Franz Hahn, Germany
Casado Limited Edition201410/2022Marriage of 38 fresh Bourbon Barrels from 2014 in two 6000l Portuguese Redwine Vats