Starting 2021 with a bang! The oldest Springbank that I've tasted to date, and 70% of it has been fully-matured in rum casks. This should be fun!
Sitting at the upper end of this legendary Campbeltown distillery's core range, Springbank 21 tends to be very difficult to find on Australian shelves at regular retail prices. In fact Springbank in general is as well, with the exception of the 10-year old, since shipments are sporadic and few & far between, and we just don't get enough stock - not helped this year by Covid, of course. A newly arrived batch of the 12-year old Cask Strength can be expected to last a couple of days online, with a few slower-to-react physical bottle shops taking a little longer - usually another couple of days! And the 21-year old is a slower yet similar story, despite the serious price point: you're looking at $450-500 AUD, and this is not a cask strength or single cask bottling. There are 3,000-4,000 bottles released with each annual batch, although a tiny proportion of those ever make it to Australia, and they're always bottled at 46%. Each batch varies in their cask make-ups, with the 2018 batch that I'm reviewing today coming from 70% rum casks and 30% first-fill bourbon casks (all fully-matured and married together), while the 2019 was 45% port casks and 55% rum casks, and the 2020 which is yet to make it to Australia is a more complicated mix of bourbon, rum, sherry and port casks. This is the first example of Springbank 21 that I've tasted, but from all reports quality is generally very high. Prior to this the oldest Springbank official bottling that I've tasted was the regular 18-year old, also bottled at 46%, which while again high quality is also quite an expensive proposition here at around $250-280. It also tends to stick to conventional cask recipes, usually a mix of sherry & bourbon casks. There is also a 25-year old Springbank in the range, again bottled at 46% and usually released in annual batches (but all bets are off thanks to Covid), and you'll need to save up around $800-900 for that privilege.
Yes, those are some high prices compared to the younger limited releases from the same distillery, and when not at cask strength (nothing wrong with 46%, though), but the rarity factor is quite high with these, and demand for older Springbank bottlings is always very high. And that difference merely shows what a good deal the distillery's limited bottlings tend to be at their initial retail pricing - and I'm including both the un-peated and triple-distilled Hazelburn and heavily-peated and double-distilled Longrow there. As you can see from the photo above, only 10% of the distillery's already-small annual production goes to each of these other spirits, with the remaining 80% going to the namesake Springbank spirit, which is lightly-peated and 2.5-times distilled. The 2.5-times comes from a complicated distillation regimen where (in layman's terms) some of the low wines that result from the first distillation are combined with some of the feints from the second distillation, and the resulting liquid is distilled a third time. Adding to the complexity of this regimen is the fact that the first of the distillery's three stills is direct-fired, and the second uses a worm tub condenser for less copper contact and a heavier, oilier spirit. As a quick side note, the heavily-peated and double-distilled Longrow spirit uses only these two stills, which is partly why it can be so pungent and powerful (and delicious) even in comparison to the Springbank spirit; which is hardly a wallflower whisky in itself!
Both of J&A Mitchell's distilleries (Springbank and Glengyle, which produces Kilkerran single malts) are surging in popularity these days, and the 2020 factor has not helped them keep up - we can expect more shortages and delays in the near future thanks to this small, privately-owned distillery being shut down for a large chunk of the year. Time will tell what sort of a dent that has made, and many other distilleries were in the same boat. In fact many were worse off, and plenty are not out of the woods yet. So, a 2018 bottling of Springbank 21-year old, 70% matured in rum casks and 30% in ex-bourbon casks (matured separately and vatted/married together), with a total of 3,700 bottles released circa March 2018. Naturally it's non-chill filtered and naturally coloured, as is the case with all single malts from the distillery. 21 years is quite the time capsule really (roughly back to 1996-97 in this case), although unlike most distilleries not much will have changed at Springbank over those two decades. Don't forget that this is one of very few malt whisky distilleries in the world that floor malts 100% of their barley on-site, and also one of the few in Scotland that bottles on-site. They also floor malt the barley that is put to use a couple of hundred metres up the road at Glengyle, and they also bottle both the Kilkerran single malts and also most of the independent bottlings from Cadenhead's at Springbank. Quite the busy little operation, that bottling hall! The sample for this review came from a generous mate who stumbled across a bargain-priced bottle recently, at a store that obviously did not realise what they had! Let's see how it goes.
Colour: Gold.
Nose: Soft, sweet & dusty. Demerara sugar (coffee crystals / natural sugar crystals), fresh red apples and a little spearmint. Tropical fruit - banana and melon, a little pineapple, and some vanilla. Almonds, black pepper and that Springbank dusty, dank dunnage warehouse note (a.k.a. funk!) coming through. A nice chalky minerality too, like warm baked salt.
Texture: Light-medium weight, but absolutely no shortage of character or flavour. Silky, no spirit-y heat at all.
Taste: Black pepper & sweet tropical fruit, that lovely baked salt minerality. A little savoury honey, some marzipan and a soft earthy peat. The demerara sugar again (not white sugar and not quite brown sugar) and that lovely farmyard-y dunnage note.
Finish: Long length. Sweet vanilla, fruit syrup, and that delicious drying salty, mineral, oily & damp stone, Campbeltown loveliness. A little oak towards the end which is verging on bitter, but it's balanced and kept in check by everything else.
Score: 4 out of 5.
Notes: Very delicious stuff this! As usual with Springbank, there's loads of character and flavour on offer. This is a deep & complex whisky that also shows a slightly softer, sweeter and more refined side in this older example. It's relatively gentle and soft, yet very complex and entertaining - this 21 does not sit still either, it's constantly changing and keeps things interesting. I don't even wish it was bottled at a higher strength, I'd say it's spot-on at 46% - although I must admit I still wouldn't turn my nose up at a cask strength version!
The rum casks do show themselves here, but they've worked in harmony with both the bourbon casks and the spirit itself - which was not the case with 2019's 15-year old Rum Cask release if you ask me - that one was a little muted by the over-assertive rum casks. But in this case everything has worked very well together, and the result is greater than the sum of it's parts. Expensive, yes, but you do get what you pay for!
Cheers!
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