Springbank Open Day 2024 Whisky Review!

A recent auction win that I couldn't resist! A 10-year old Springbank that has been fully matured in Fijian rum casks, bottled for the distillery's Open Day during the Campbeltown Festival in May 2024. 

Firstly, let's address the half-sized elephant in the room. For those obsessed with sizes, yes this is a 350ml bottle, and so were the other two Springbank products that were bottled for this year's Open Day. I have absolutely no objection to this whatsoever, and if you're a whisky fan that intends to drink and enjoy rather than flip for profit, neither should you! There are a few important benefits here. The half-bottle means there are more to go around, with 2,200 bottles only available from the distillery shop during the Open Day, and limited to one per person. Obviously that would've been halved if it had been bottled in 700ml format, which in theory means that more people will get to taste & enjoy this whisky than they would've otherwise. Secondly, it means the bottles are cheaper from the original seller, retailing for just £35. Thirdly, it means they're a much less attractive proposition for the flippers that have tried their hardest to bastardise Springbank over the last few years. That point makes me a little hypocritical since I'm perpetuating the problem. I purchased this very bottle from a secondary market auction site here in Australia, which someone had obviously flipped for profit, and I paid significantly more than that original price of roughly $70 AUD. So they got what they wanted. I paid $160 for this 350ml bottle, but considering what it is, where it came from, and the relative rarity in this part of the world, I don't think that's unreasonable. For those playing overseas, the standard core range Springbank 10-year old at 46% retails at $220-250 AUD here. Yes I said "retails", that's not secondary pricing! Which is utterly ridiculous, and it's just not worth the money anymore. The core range 12-year old from Springbank's sister distillery Glengyle, also owned by J&A Mitchell and producing Kilkerran single malt, is far more reasonable thanks to a different distributor here in Australia, but I'll concede that it's also not as popular. It should be, but never mind that for now. Moving right along!

Springbank's Open Day occurs during the Campbeltown Festival, which is Campbeltown's equivalent of the Feis Ile over on Islay, which usually starts on the day that the Campbeltown Festival ends. Springbank, Glengyle/Kilkerran, and Glen Scotia all have their open days with special tastings and events, and all bottle special releases to mark the occasion. Just like Feis Ile, this means the town of Campbeltown is inundated with thirsty whisky folk, booking out the small town's accommodation and transport services, and queuing for hours to get their hands on a bottle of something special. And just like Feis Ile, many of those bottles are promptly sent to the various auction sites to be flipped for profit. Glen Scotia take a similar approach to Laphroaig or Ardbeg for their commemorative bottling, choosing to do a much larger worldwide release that tends to be something different from their normal core range. Kilkerran and Springbank's releases are much smaller, but are generally not single casks. This year's Kilkerran was the first 20-year old single malt, since the distillery opened in May 2004. It was initially matured in rum casks for 10-years followed by another 10-years in ex-bourbon casks, and retailed for £140. These days Springbank release three bottlings for each Campbeltown Festival, one for each of their single malts; the namesake Springbank, the unpeated and triple-distilled Hazelburn, and the heavily peated and double-distilled Longrow. All are labelled as Open Day bottlings, with fairly nondescript white labels and plain glass bottles rather than the brands' usual packaging. For 2024 the Hazelburn was an 8-year old Bourbon cask & Oloroso sherry cask matured, and the Longrow was a 16-year old that was matured in Ruby port casks. And the Springbank that we're looking at here is a 10-year old that was fully matured in rum casks and bottled at 57.1% ABV. 

Springbank's namesake spirit is distilled from the distillery's floor malted barley that is lightly peated to roughly 15 ppm, and it's distilled a sum total of 2.5-times thanks to a complex system where some of the feints - the undesirable part that comes through late in the distillation after the spirit cut has been taken - from the second / intermediate still are distilled a third time in the distillery's third still. See image above for a handy diagram that (slightly) helps! One of my all-time favourite Springbanks was a 14-year old "Cage Bottling" that was fully matured in a refill rum cask - see here for that review. So when I spotted that this 2024 Open Day bottling was fully matured in rum casks, my interest was piqued. I didn't love the 15-year old Rum Cask bottling from 2018, so I wasn't going to go silly on it when a few bottles popped up at auction, just in case. There's an interesting point of difference here though. For the first time, Springbank has specified where these rum casks came from. While they haven't specified the exact distillery that was responsible for the casks' previous incumbent, they've told us that they came from Fiji in the South Pacific. There's only one rum distillery in this small island nation; South Pacific Distilleries, which is found in the city of Lautoka near the north-west coast of Fiji's main island. Trading as Rum Co. of Fiji, their aged rums are sold under the brands Bati or Ratu. The Ratu brand is made from Fijian molasses and is distilled in both column and pot stills, and is aged for at least 5-years in American oak ex-bourbon barrels. A couple of this distillery's rums have been bottled and sold by Cadenhead's, the independent bottler that is owned by J&A Mitchell, Springbank's owners. So it all makes sense. I'm yet to try any Fijian rum, but from what I can see they tend to be quite heavy in style, with parallels drawn to Jamaican and other Caribbean rums. Let's see what effect they've had on this little 10-year old Springbank, shall we? 

Springbank Open Day 2024, 10-Year Old, 57.1%. Campbeltown, Scotland.

Bottled for Campbeltown Festival 2024, fully matured in Fijian rum casks. 2,200 x 350ml bottles. Non-chill filtered, natural colour.

Colour: Pale gold. 

Nose: Juicy, herbal, sweet, nippy. Pineapple juice, white pepper, green chilli flakes, paw paw (papaya) in syrup. Dried leafy herbs, brown sugar, fried bananas. Szechuan pepper, pear drops, yeasty bread dough, lemon peel. Honey & aniseed around the edges. 

Texture: Medium weight, just. Sweet, fruity, juicy. And quite hot. 

Taste: The rum influence is obvious, sweet & funky. Overripe tropical fruit, caramelised brown sugar, more Szechuan pepper. Pineapple juice & jalapeno chillies. Honey, lemon peel, and a bit of vanilla cream heading into the finish. 

Finish: Medium length. Vanilla cream & lemon peel carry through, with more sugary rum sweetness. White pepper, pineapple juice, jalapeno chilli flakes, and malt biscuits. Overripe tropical fruity and a touch of drying sea salt to round things out.  

Score: 3 out of 5. 

Notes: Quite sweet and very rum cask-driven, a little too much so for my tastes. I don't mind a good Caribbean molasses rum on occasion, and I love a peated malt matured in a rum cask, but these rum casks feel too sugary and too assertive, and too dominant. They've killed off the Springbank distillery character, which has then simplified the whole experience. The whisky seems quite raw and young as well, maybe more so than the 5-year old Society bottling that was released a couple of years ago - which was the same ABV!  It's certainly a different style of Springbank which is probably why they chose to bottle it for the Open Day, but it also could've passed for a younger Hazelburn. It's not a complete miss mind you, this is a flavoursome dram, and I'm sure fans of sweeter & lighter rums would enjoy it more. But personally when I'm having a Springbank, I want it to taste like a Springbank!

This makes two rum cask Springbank releases that haven't blown me away, one that I liked much more (the old brown label bottling mentioned above) and one (a cage bottle, admittedly) refill rum cask that is still one of my all-time favourites. There was also a delicious Longrow Open Day bottling a few years ago, but I'mtalking about the Springbank make here. I've never thought rum casks were as "hit and miss" as some others proclaim, but maybe that's because I've mainly enjoyed heavily peated whiskies that had spent some time in rum casks - where the casks are more easily kept at bay by a more assertive spirit character. But Springbank is hardly a wallflower... More research required!

Cheers!

Springbank 8-Year Old 1980s Whisky Review!

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!