North British 11 Year Old 2013 Blackadder Raw Cask Single Bourbon Barrel #314708 Lowland Single Grain Scotch Whisky (2024) 70cl
1 of 285 bottles produced from a single bourbon cask.
As with all of the Raw Cask series, this whisky has not been filtered at all and may contain harmless cask sediment.
Blackadder are a family owned independent whisky bottler established in 1995 by Robin Tucek who now runs the business with his son, Michael, and daughter, Hannah. Initially a whisky bottler, they have since developed their range to include other spirits, including rum and gin.
TASTING NOTES
Nose: Butterscotch, toasted cornflakes, vanilla fudge. Swirling the glass brings up notes of toffee, pear, and a hint of oak, adding depth to the flavour.
Palate: Rich and syrupy texture. Vanilla cream and pancake syrup with a hint of spice.
Finish: A smooth yet substantial finish. A lingering warmth remains, along with nuances of toasted wood.
About North British
Blend contributed to: Cutty Sark, Famous Grouse, Chivas Regal, J&B, Isle Of Skye
Practically crowd-funded to provide an alternative source of grain, North British is today jointly owned by two of Scotland's largest distillers.
The North British (the archaic and somewhat disparaging term applied to post-Jacobite Scotland) distillery was founded in Edinburgh in 1885. Up until that point, Scotland’s blenders and spirit merchants could only buy their grain from DCL [see Cameronbridge]. In an attempt to break the monopoly, Andrew Usher, William Sanderson, John Crabbie and James Watson joined forces to build a new – and substantial – grain distillery in Gorgie, close to the Union Canal, the railway line, and the Caledonian distillery which had been absorbed into DCL the year before. A case of the last straw perhaps?
Production started in 1887 from a single Coffey. Within three years capacity had doubled to three million gallons a year. Whisky-making ceased during the First World War, but production restarted in 1920. It was nursed cautiously through the tricky period of the 1930s, but blossomed once more post-WWII. By the 1960s it was making six million gallons a year (a figure which would double by the start of the following decade), and for a period, North British was the largest grain plant in Scotland.
By the 1960s it was still being run as a kind of co-operative with its shareholders including Robertson & Baxter, IDV, William Lawson, Macdonald Martin, Seagram and William Teacher. In 1993 its management was taken over by Lothian Distillers, an equal partnership between R&B [now Edrington Group] and IDV. The result of the merger between the latter and DCL (by that time called UD) in 1997, meant that North British was being jointly run by the firm which it had set up in opposition to.
About Blackadder
Blackadder’s philosophy is very simple – they believe that the Cask is King. Sixty to seventy percent of the flavours in a whisky are taken up slowly from the cask as the spirit lies maturing in the warehouse. The action of changing temperature draws the spirit in and out of the cask.
A family operation started and piloted by whisky legend Robin Tucek, they sell to a few limited countries around the world, primarily Taiwan, Japan, the USA and Sweden.
Blackadder was established in 1995 by Robin Tucek who runs the family business with his daughter Hannah and son Michael. Blackadder International gets its name from fugitive 17th-century preacher, John Blackadder. He is famous for preaching against the evils of alcohol.
Hannah Tucek states that the Blackadder International company will always be family-run. Each of the three owner-operators brings something unique to the table. Michael Tucek used to be a chef. He uses his familiarity with a wide range of aromas and flavours to write all tasting notes. Michael feels that “our sense of smell is the most direct sense to our brain and also our most complex. It’s proven that once you go over three aroma compounds mixed together, everything is subjective and becomes very personal. Every aroma can evoke a different memory in each of us and we build up our aroma library as we grow. By not being afraid to say what we sense and share it, we can all learn something from each other.” Like Michael, Hannah grew up around whisky and has come to appreciate whisky at its pure state. Her father and brother joke that she is the one that’s really in charge.
Every cask is unique, with its own fingerprint. This is why they bottle most of their whiskies from single casks. They don’t believe in chilling or otherwise heavily filtering their whiskies, and they never, repeat never, add caramel colouring or flavouring to their spirits. They have always believed the personalities of their whiskies are colourful enough. Their raw cask is famous for the barrel char in each bottle.
Important note about raw cask bottlings:
Raw Cask bottlings take place without any treatment of whiskey during transfer from the barrel to the bottle. Neither cold filtration nor coarse filtration is carried out to separate the wood flakes or the fine carbon particles from the flaming of the barrel before storing a whisky. Barrel residues and wood shavings migrate into the bottle and guarantee the consumer a completely untreated whisky - just from the wood - a term that is otherwise only used for the alcohol content!
Of course, wood flakes and pieces of coal should not be drunk. When the bottle is stored upright, the wood flakes and pieces of coal typical of raw cask bottling settle on the bottom of t
59.8% ABV
70cl
