The oldest Springbank bottling that I've tasted to date! After first spying a bottle at a bar in Tokyo in 2023, a bottle appeared on a local auction site almost a year later, and I couldn't let it go - despite the high price tag, it was worth it!
Springbank is quite popular among whisky enthusiasts in Japan, and there are a lot of older official bottlings to be found in some of the fantastic whisky bars there. It's not uncommon to see bottlings from the early 2000s or the 2010s sitting on bar shelves - or on the actual bar top in many cases - but as spoiled for choice as any whisky lover is in Japan, it's still rather unusual to see one quite this old. This 8-year old was bottled for Japan in the mid-1980s, somewhere between 1983 and 1988, as far as I can deduce - thanks to a couple of Japanese bar owner/operators who helped confirm that! That means it was distilled in the 1970s, at a time when the Scotch whisky world was unrecognisable compared to what it is today. It also means that this whisky was bottled in the darkest time for Scotch whisky since World War II, in 1983 alone a massive number of distilleries had been mothballed, many of which were demolished altogether. Diageo alone closed 15 of its distilleries, ranging from now-famous names like Port Ellen and Brora to obscurities like Coleburn and Banff. Even Springbank itself was closed at the time this whisky was bottled, since production ceased in 1979 and didn't start up again until 1987. This was all at a time when single malt official bottlings were still a new thing and blended Scotch whisky was still very much at the helm of the industry - it still is, of course, making up more than 80% of global Scotch whisky sales. Interestingly though when Springbank reopened in 1987 they made the decision to stop supplying to blenders and to focus on single malts, which was very unusual at the time. They did continue to sell casks though, up until the mid-1990s I believe.
This particular official bottling of 8-year old Springbank is "only" bottled at 43% ABV, which is still a preferred strength in Japan, although there were a number of Springbanks bottled at 43% at and prior to this time. Interestingly the non-chill filtration disclaimer that we're all familiar with these days is printed on the back label of this pear-shaped bottle, but I can only tell you that thanks to the magic of Google Translate - the entirety of the back label is written in Japanese. It is also stated as being natural colour, even going so far as to say "which is why the colour appears lighter". This just goes to show that Springbank was ahead of the curve with natural presentation and declaring it as such right there on the bottle, even forty years ago. And that's at a bottling strength of 43%, remember, rather than the 46% (and above) mark where most contemporary producers will happily skip chill filtration thanks to the higher level of alcohol keeping more of those lovely hazing compounds dissolved in the whisky, or "in solution" as the chemists would say.
Now, the big question with old bottlings like this is always "what was different back then?". Sometimes there are overt changes in production and/or policy like switching from 100% Golden Promise barley, or switching from floor malted barley to 100% commercially malted barley, or switching from direct-fired to steam heated stills, or other more modern equipment. Then there's the added complications that are often a murky subject, like the use of paxarette in sherry casks, or the use of a different yeast strain, changes in fermentation times or distillation cut points, and that sort of thing. When it comes to Springbank though, it's all a little more challenging because barely anything will have changed, production-wise or equipment-wise, in those 40-years. Obviously there were also industry-wide changes like cask sources, yeast strains, barley varieties, and the general regulatory and environmental stuff. The big glaring difference in this bottling and all that were distilled around this time is something that is often overlooked with older Springbanks. While we might assume that the distillery has always malted their own barley in-house, they actually stopped floor-malting their barley for over three decades in the second-half of the 20th century. According to the Malt Whisky Yearbook they switched to commercially malted barley in 1960 and the malting floors weren't recommissioned until 1992, meaning that anything distilled between those dates was made from barley that was malted elsewhere. The interesting and mysterious thing here is that this date range covers all of the legendary old Local Barley bottlings that were distilled in the 1960s and bottled in the 1990s, and the rear label on those mega-expensive unicorn bottlings does state that the barley was malted at the distillery. So either they made an exception for those 1960s local barley distillation runs and re-opened the malting floors for a limited time, or the date range is slightly incorrect and they closed the malting floors in the mid-1960s.
Something that we can't really allow for here is the effect that 40-odd years in a glass bottle has had on this whisky - while whisky doesn't continue ageing once bottled thanks to the higher alcohol level in spirits and the inert glass used, such long periods - decades - do have a different effect that is rather difficult to pin down; known as "Old Bottle Effect" or "OBE" among aficionados. This is generally thought to be more pronounced in bottles that are sealed with corks, which aren't perfectly airtight, which will also cause evaporation over time and in sub-optimal storage conditions i.e. swings in temperature and humidity. Screwcap bottles like this Springbank are still affected though and evaporation can still occur. When I picked it up this bottle's fill level was roughly the same as that of the bottle pictured below, which would've accelerated this effect - it's mainly the alcohol (ethanol) that evaporates since it's more volatile. Parafilm your old bottles people, even if they're screwcaps! But even if evaporation wasn't a factor, there's still air in the bottle between the liquid and the closure - known as the "headspace". It's all difficult to quantify though because there are just so many variables involved. Even if the same person were able to taste the exact same whisky a decade or two apart, their palate will have changed, as will their memory of the previous encounter with the whisky, and it's that subjectivity which makes it impossible to compare and contrast between an OBE-affected whisky and a non-affected whisky.
Springbank 8-year old for Japan, bottled 1980s, 43.0%. Campbeltown, Scotland.
Bottled 1983-1988, presumably matured in refill ex-bourbon casks. Non-chill filtered, natural colour (declared on label).
Colour: Pale gold.
Nose: Soft, fruity & sweet, clean. Lovely malted barley cereal notes, thick honey, fresh red apples. White pepper, icing sugar, and candied lemon peel. More time brings out some dry old oak, subtle earthy peatiness, a lick of salt, and a lovely fresh minerality - beach pebbles? It may be soft & clean for a Springbank, but there's still plenty going on!
Texture: Medium weight. Lightly oily, sweet, honeyed, relatively clean. Deliciously soft & silky. I'd have to assume that the ABV has dropped slightly over that 40-years, but regardless there's no heat whatsoever.
Taste: More thick honey, sweet malted barley, candied lemon peel & icing sugar sweetness. It's more citrusy here with some lemon cake icing/frosting, a little marzipan too. Red apple skins, soft earthy peat, white pepper, and a soft "dunnage" minerality & earthiness.
Finish: Medium length, just. That soft earthy peat fades into a light chalky & gravelly minerality, followed by the red apples from the nose - but they're slightly oxidised (browning) now. Lemon icing again, sea salt, and that lovely earthy dunnage "funk" that we all love in Springbank - it's much softer and cleaner than a contemporary bottling, though.
Score: 4 out of 5.
Notes: Lovely! Very soft & subtle compared to a modern Springbank, which would partly be due to the lower ABV, plus being bottled 40-years ago perhaps. It doesn't suffer from that lower bottling strength though, aside from the length of finish perhaps. Whereas some of these older lower strength bottlings can devolve into watery and muted experiences, in this Springbank the nice oily texture is there on the palate, while the complexity is still there on the nose - no doubt helped by the natural presentation. It's definitely lighter and cleaner than a contemporary Springbank, but it isn't muted by any means. Aside form differences in production or desired style of spirit, that could also be intentional since the Japanese preference tends to lean towards sweeter, lighter, and more refined whiskies that are more "easy drinking". I'd have to assume that was even more the case back in the 1980s when Suntory was only just starting to release single malts and long before highballs had become a staple serve in Japan.
As liquid time capsules go, this one is a treasure!
Cheers!
