The Chosen Few

A first bottling of a new exclusive series of single cask bottling from Glenglassaugh Distillery titled “The Chosen Few” is now available.

Each bottling in this series is limited edition, from a single cask of Glenglassaugh and has been chosen by a different member of the team at the distillery. Each of the ten members of the team has made their choice and over the next 3 years the selected casks will be bottled and made available for sale. The selected casks include some from the very old stock of pre 1986 while others have not yet reached the age at which we can call them whisky but they will soon.

The first cask in the series is a 1976 sherry butt, chosen by Ronnie Routledge who is well known in the industry and beyond having previously worked with both Single Malts Direct and Gordon and Macphail. Ronnie is our customer accounts manager and is regularly active on “Friends of Glenglassaugh” on Facebook.

The whisky is a great example of a 35 year old cask which has loads of sherry, but not overpoweringly so,  to complement the expected fruit medley notes and array of spices at the end, which is typical Glenglassaugh.

There are 654 bottles of the whisky, which is bottled in a 700ml tall round bottle and comes in a gold coloured round tube, in a similar livery to The Managers’ Legacy range. The whisky will retail in the UK at £300.00 per bottle. (Unfortunately due to bottling all of the cask in 700ml bottles it will not be available in USA or South Africa)

As usual it is bottled on site, at cask strength, with no chill filtration and with no colour added.

More Exclusive Releases

We have been working hard with  a number of our distributors around the world and so will soon be able to  announce exclusive releases of more single cask bottling in a number of  markets. This follows the great success of an exclusive bottling for our German  distributor Caminneci Wine and Spirit Partner which sold out extremely quickly.

I can reveal that we have  agreed exclusive releases with importers in 4 different continents so if you  are wanting to find one then you will have good chance that one will be coming  to a country, relatively, near to you.

As the bottles are despatched to  market I will let you know more about each bottling.

This activity has meant that we  have been much busier in our small bottling operations recently and although it  won’t help for this year, we are looking to move the bottling into a larger  area on site and have a bottling and packaging area which is larger and better  laid out and easier to work in.

Sherry Octaves

At the end of August we will  receive delivery of our first batch of sherry octaves, direct from Spain. This will  be another first in the industry as no-one else has matured spirit for full  maturation in an ex-first fill sherry  50  litre cask. Many of you have taken the opportunity to order one of these casks  and be one of the first people to own one and such has been the demand that we  have pre-sold  all of the first delivery.
However the good news is that we have a second batch due later this year and we  are starting to take orders for this second delivery now.

Peated Spirit

Rather embarrassingly we have  found that demand for our octaves to be filled with peated spirit has  been greater than we  xpected and we have no
peated spirit left. However we will be back in production shortly and as we are  starting with peated malt then we will catch-up with the outstanding orders.
The growing demand for our peated spirit and the number of compliments that we  receive about the quality has meant that we have decided to increase the volume  of production of this type of new spirit again in 2011, which was already  larger than 2010.

Visitor Centre

Well the windows, which we have  been waiting on for a long time, have finally arrived. Ronnie Lawrence has been  working hard on installing them and they have really transformed the place,  although there is still a lot of work to be done.

The next stage will be  installing the electrics, then loft insulation, then the  flooring before moving on to the fittings and decoration.

We aiming to have it completed  by the end of this year but with the above workload then Ronnie may a hand at  times

Glenglassaugh in the press

We have recently made more  appearances in the press, firstly  our  recently released 45 year old single cask single malt Scotch whisky winning the  summer Merchants Challenge in Scottish Field magazine. Ronnie Routledge was previously a  judge for this magazine, although he is now barred as he works for a whisky  company, and assures me that the competition is both fiercely competitive and tough with a high number of excellent whiskies.

Shortly after that I was interviewed  as part of a article in SMWS magazine which elicited opinions on what a few people  from the industry would do if there was no legislation on how Scotch whisky is  manufactured. I voiced my opinion that more innovation should be allowed, particularly  around in maturation and discovered that I had been described as “The  Maturation Maverick”, must admit I kind of liked the title.

Finally the result of an  interview with a business journalist in Edinburgh was a 2 page feature spread  which appeared in the Scottish Daily Record business section and also in the  Scottish Business Insider on-line magazine. http://www.business7.co.uk/features/business-profiles/2011/07/29/stuart-nickerson-profile-growth-has-been-double-digit-since-we-relaunced-106408-23305143/

Once again please feel free to comment below or send me an email or comment on “Friends of Glenglassaugh” on Facebook.

Slange

Stuart