Tullibardine 10 Year Old 2005 SMWS Single Cask 28.26 Pile Driver Punch Whisky Highland Single Malt Scotch Whisky (2015) 75cl

Tullibardine 10 Year Old 2005 SMWS Single Cask 28.26 Pile Driver Punch Whisky Highland Single Malt Scotch Whisky (2015) 75cl

1 of 192 bottles produced

This was only released in USA so a little more whisky at 75cl instead of 70cl. It is a cask that we did not get to enjoy in the UK.
It is such a delight to see some of the really early editions of the SMWS single cask bottlings. Even better to drink them!

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!

The SMWS are one of the Britain's most revered independent bottlers with a worldwide network of partner bars with one mission of getting as much whisky at natural cask strength without water to different nations including USA, Canada, Switzerland, UK, Austria, Germany and many others.

These older labels from the first runs are mostly with distillation methods that include direct heat which was replaced with steam for many distilleries for environmental reasons changing the taste of whisky forever. It'll get real interesting when nuclear fusion is used to distil whisky. We might glow green for a few weeks after we drink the stuff. Who knows.... but all we know is that the old stuff has a musky taste that is VERY welcomed by people nowadays trying to time travel through whisky's past.

TASTING NOTES

The nose hinted at paint and glue – water shifted this to fresh linen and warm photocopies; we didn’t find that in the taste. The rest of the nose had herbal, grassy notes (hay, thyme, cucumber) and fruity sweetness (brandy snaps, orange zest, peach stones, golden syrup, chilli marmalade). The palate had a pile-driver punch of spirity heat (even with water) but after a couple of sips we learned to take it on the chin – nice grassy, cereal notes, including popcorn, riverbank reeds and mint, then more of that fruity sweetness (mandarin, rhubarb and pineapple, with spun sugar, vanilla and pink Chewits).

Review & Notes by Philip Storry

The nose is grassy and herbal - green grass, hints of lemongrass, sage, mint and a little touch of pine needles. There's also a fruitiness - rhubarb and light orange zest, with a little peach. Finally, a hint of tobacco building on repeated nosing. Quite the most complex and delicious nose I've experienced for a while! The palate is thin with a little waxiness but not much coating. The body has plenty of spirit notes, veering towards acetate and PVA glue very briefly before opening into mint leaf, spun sugar, orange chew sweets, light toffee and vanilla. The finish is short, with toffee and lemongrass.

Water brings out tight, short-lived and compact whorling - almost disappointing. The nose now has less sage and green grass, more lemongrass, orange zest, peaches and gains some golden syrup. The body has more toffee and a hint of tobacco leaves, with pineapple, peaches and vanilla towards the end. It's still spirituous, but pleasantly so. The finish is still short, but has less lemongrass and more pineapple and a hint of tobacco joining the toffee.

A superb and complex dram that needs time and repeated tasting - what a shame!

About Tullibardine

During its Invergordon era, Tullibardine was set up to produce a light, nutty malt which was mostly used when young and aged in refill casks for buyer-own blends.

The requirements of a single malt house – which Tullibardine became – necessitated some tweaking of the spirit run (introducing more high-toned floral notes now coming to the fore, with the nuttiness being dialled down) and a more 21st century wood policy with a massive influx of fresh casks.

Alcohol has been produced in Blackford for over six centuries. A brewery was operational in 1488 when James IV [the King who famously asked Friar John Cor to make aqua vitae from eight bolls of malt in 1495] stopped to buy a barrel of ale after his coronation at Scone. It could lay claim to be the oldest ‘public’ brewery in the kingdom.

Distilling was also tried. In 1798, William & Henry Bannerman opened the first Tullibardine distillery, though it only ran for a year. In 1814, Andrew Bannerman (presumably a relative) tried again. This time it operated until 1837. By the 19th century, the town had a maltings and three breweries: the original one, Gleneagles Brewery, now owned by the Sharp family, the other two by the Eadie family. Both of Eadie’s plants closed by the turn of the 20th century, leaving Gleneagles to soldier on until 1927. At this point it seemed as if this rich tradition had finally ceased, but in 1949 the famous distillery designer William Delme-Evans bought the Gleneagles Brewery site and built a new distillery there. It was the first to be built in Scotland since 1900.

In 1953 it was bought by blender Brodie Hepburn which increased capacity (see Glenturret) and from there via Invergordon (which bought Brodie Hepburn) into Whyte & Mackay (which in turn bought Invergordon) which promptly mothballed it, though retaining its extensive warehousing.

Tullibardine lay silent from 1994 until 2003, when a business consortium snapped it up. Their idea was to sell off some of the site as a retail park, using the money raised to get distilling up and running again.

In a similar fashion to Bruchladdich, the new owners found that most of the stock had been filled into old, tired casks which though suitable for some aspects of blending were not ideal for a stand-alone single malt brand. An extensive – and expensive – re-casking operation started along with the inevitable rash of ‘finished’ whiskies. The group sold their interest in 2011 to the French wine and spirit group, Picard which owns the Highland Queen and Muirhead’s brands and was looking for capacity.

The (failed) retail park venture has been bought back and a newly repackaged and reformulated range of single malts has been introduced.

61.4% ABV

75cl