Glengoyne, ratios of different casks for their whiskies

bedlamborn · February 8 2017 at 7:07PM

I looked at Glengoynes Swedish distributors home page and found some interesting facts what kind of casks they use for their whiskies. It looked like the following, translated from Swedish.

Glengoyne 12yo, 20% First fill sherry, 20% first fill Bourbon, 60% second fills
Glengoyne 15yo, 20% First fill sherry, 30% first fill Bourbon, 50% second fills
Glengoyne 18yo, 35% First fill sherry, 15% First fill sherry casks of American oak, 50% second fills
Glengoyne 21yo, Only sherry casks, Mostly first fill and a small amount of second fills.
Glengoyne 25yo, Only European sherry casks, mostly is first fill.
The second fill in all of the above I believe also may include third fill casks also if I understood it correctly.

It is quite interesting to see how the casks used changes depending on the age of the whisky. Are there any other distilleries that have such information available?

kroman · February 8 2017 at 9:01PM

@ben ; has a bunnahabhain distillery tour vlog where the guy Ben interviews talks about the differences between their 12 and 18 year. I think he says that the 12 is 75/25 bourbon to Sherry casks, while the 18 is a 60/40 ratio

[Deleted User] · February 9 2017 at 1:54AM

@bedlamborn

My experience is that this sort of information takes some effort to find. Between my whisky books, magazines, and the internet, I can usually find at least some cask info for the expressions I buy.

I wish that more distilleries would include cask info for their different expressions, but I think we are in the small minority that would care about such disclosures.

Is there a particular distillery you are interested in?

hwchoy · February 9 2017 at 3:53AM

do I understand correctly that the older sherry casks would be european oak by default, whereas the younger sherry casks could be in american oak?

bedlamborn · February 9 2017 at 3:58PM

@kroman
Will have to look at that video yet again.

@Carlton
I am specially interested in Glenfarclas, Talisker and Blablair.

@hwchoy
The specially mentioned European casks for the 18 and 25. So all the other sherry casks mentioned is certainly American oak.

horst_s_2 · February 13 2017 at 2:05PM

Carlton said:

@bedlamborn
My experience is that this sort of information takes some effort to find.

I think that these numbers should not be taken for granted. They may have applied to some batch in the past. I think they will vary over the time according to the available casks.

[Deleted User] · February 22 2017 at 4:20PM

@bedlamborn

Unfortunately, as you know, Balblair, Talisker, and Glenfarclas don't provide any detail of the sort that Glengoyne does. I was able to pull together some bits of info on various bottlings, but maybe a top-level view might be more useful. (You might already be familiar with this info.)

About 98% or so of all Balblair spirit is matured in ex-bourbon wood, so the vast majority of their bottlings are some combination of 1st-fill, 2nd-fill, and refill ex-bourbon barrels. They do use some ex-sherry wood, both European and American oak, but this is usually reserved for 100% ex-sherry expressions. Their website does a pretty good job of specifying the type of wood that each expression was matured in.

Like most other Diageo malts, info on Talisker is pretty scant from the distillery. The 10 and 18 year olds are mostly matured in refill ex-bourbon barrels with a little ex-sherry cask whisky bended in. The newer NAS malts are a bit of a mixed bag, but they make liberal use of rejuvenated casks that have been given a heavy char.

Interestingly, most of the Glenfarclas standard range uses approximately 60-65% ex-bourbon wood (no 1st-fill is used) with the remainder being 1st-fill and 2nd-fill ex-sherry casks. The younger expressions can have more 1st-fill ex-sherry casks to give a more powerful impact in the shorter maturation time.

bedlamborn · February 24 2017 at 4:41PM

@Carlton

Thanks, so sad that such information is so hard to find.

[Deleted User] · February 24 2017 at 5:48PM

bedlamborn said:

@Carlton
Thanks, so sad that such information is so hard to find.

I agree!