Fettercairn 12 Year Old 2012 SMWS Single 1st Fill HTMC Finish Hogshead 94.54 Into The Satchel Highland Single Malt Scotch Whisky (2025) 70cl
1 of 170 bottles produced from a single 1st fill bourbon cask.
The Scotch Malt Whisky Society was founded in Edinburgh in 1983 by Phillip 'Pip' Hills who, while travelling around Scotland in the 1970s, fell in love with whiskies drawn straight from the cask. After he expanded his syndicate the Society was purchased by Glenmorangie PLC in 2004. In 2015, the Society was sold back to private investors. In June 2021, the private owners floated the holding company The Artisanal Spirits Company plc on the Alternative Investment Market of the London Stock Exchange.
It has a unique code system where the first number refers to the distillery and the second refers to the cask from which the bottle comes. SMWS also offers the largest range of distilleries of any independent bottler. These curiously named drams really do have something for every whisky lover!
TASTING NOTES
Cranberries and cloudberries were mashed into a leather satchel, then topped with runny honey, wood polish, damson jam and cedar wood shavings. This had a rich, spiced and sweet nose. To taste, black cherries fizzled in hot chili oil, joined by toasted sunflower seeds, dark chocolate and spiced grapefruit salad. After a drop of water, our noses took us to a slice of marmalade on rye toast, a spoonful of sweet and sour sauce, saffron rice and Turkish delight. We then enjoyed the taste of toffee, fruit punch and chewing tobacco. After nine years in an ex-bourbon barrel, we transferred this to a first fill heavily toasted, medium charred barrel for the remainder of its maturation.
About Fettercairn
Fettercairn is set in the foothills of the wild Cairngorm Mountains & was once owned by the father of a British Prime Minister.
Fettercairn has a traditional distillery set-up with an open-topped mash tun (producing cloudy wort), wooden washbacks and small stills. There are even soap grinders on the sides of the wash stills. These would have been used to add non-perfumed soap as a surfactant to stop the stills boiling over.
Everything points to a firm, quite heavy, nutty style. This was accentuated between 1995 and 2009, when the condensers were made of stainless steel. This added a slightly burnt, pot ale character to the new make. However, a quirky cooling ring attached to the top of the swan neck, which sprays cold water down the sides of the still, aids reflux and helps the spirit lean toward a lighter style.
The single malt is aged mostly in first-fill American oak – some new wood is also in the mix – to add a balancing sweetness, with some older expressions finished in fortified wine casks.
One of the main attractions of Laurencekirk, the village nearest to Fettercairn, is a huge, ostentatious red sandstone archway spanning the road that commemorates the visit to the village of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert in 1861. Fettercairn has similarly grand pretensions. It was founded in 1825 by the local landowner Sir Alexander Ramsay, who then sold his estate, distillery and all, in 1830 to Sir John Gladstone, father of four-time British Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone.
However, the Gladstone family were hands-off owners (fun though it is to imagine ‘The People’s William’ getting to grips with distillation). Allowing the distillery to be run by tenants, they retained ownership until 1923. A short period (mostly in mothballs) under the control of Ross & Coulter ended when Fettercairn was sold to Associated Scottish Distilleries (ASD, the Scotch arm of National Distillers of America which, at its height, owned Bruichladdich, Glenury Royal, Glen Esk, Glenlochy, Benromach and Strathdee).
When ASD ceased trading in 1954, its estate was split up and Fettercairn ended up in private hands. Its new owner, Tom Scott Sutherland, had the distillery until 1971, when it was bought by Tomintoul-Glenlivet; from there it joined Whyte & Mackay.
Although mainly a contributor to the firm’s blends, it has long been bottled as a single malt. A more concerted effort started in 2009 when a range of aged variants and a pair of no-age bottlings, Fior and Fasque (the name of the Fettercairn estate), was released.
In 2018 Fettercairn was relaunched by Whyte & Mackay with a new range of single malts aged between 12 and 50 years old.
60.5% ABV
70cl
