Dailuaine 16 Year Old 2006 SMWS Single Cask 41.163 Balsamic Black Pepper Strawberry and Rhubarb Crumble Speyside Single Malt Scotch Whisky (2025) 70cl
1 of 252 bottles produced from a single Ex Bourbon Hogshead then finished in a 1st Fill Ex Oloroso Hogshead
The Scotch Malt Whisky Society was founded in Edinburgh in 1983 by Phillip 'Pip' Hills who, while travelling around Scotland in the 1970s, fell in love with whiskies drawn straight from the cask. After he expanded his syndicate the Society was purchased by Glenmorangie PLC in 2004. In 2015, the Society was sold back to private investors. In June 2021, the private owners floated the holding company The Artisanal Spirits Company plc on the Alternative Investment Market of the London Stock Exchange.
It has a unique code system where the first number refers to the distillery and the second refers to the cask from which the bottle comes. SMWS also offers the largest range of distilleries of any independent bottler. These curiously named drams really do have something for every whisky lover!
The SMWS are one of the Britain's most revered independent bottlers with a worldwide network of partner bars with one mission of getting as much whisky at natural cask strength without water to different nations including USA, Canada, Switzerland, UK, Austria, Germany and many others.
These older labels from the first runs are mostly with distillation methods that include direct heat which was replaced with steam for many distilleries for environmental reasons changing the taste of whisky forever. It'll get real interesting when nuclear fusion is used to distil whisky. We might glow green for a few weeks after we drink the stuff. Who knows.... but all we know is that the old stuff has a musky taste that is VERY welcomed by people nowadays trying to time travel through whisky's past.
TASTING NOTES
New York International Spirits Competition 2024 - 16yr Speyside Single Malt Scotch of the Year
About Quite unusual: Judges from New York’s International Spirits Competition gave this one-of-a-kind cask 16yr Speyside Single Malt Scotch of the Year honors! A hedonistic world of ‘Dark & Stormy’ cocktails, cinnamon buns and maple syrup will be revealed!
Tasting Panel Note: Have you ever had a balsamic black pepper strawberry and rhubarb crumble? That’s exactly what it reminded us of. On the palate it was like a dark 'n’ stormy cocktail, but using a a spiced rum and a ginger beer for the die-hard ginger fans out there. After reduction, the nose turned into cinnamon buns, peppermint oil, oranges and cranberries, alongside yoghurt-coated raisins and marzipan. To taste it was sweet and smooth, with a wonderful texture of Canadian maple syrup over pecan granola and, in the finish, dried mango, dark cherries and black grapes. Following 13 years in an ex-bourbon hogshead, we transferred this whisky into a first fill Spanish oak oloroso hogshead.
About Dailuaine
Rarely seen as a single malt bottling (the occasional Flora & Fauna from owner Diageo, infrequent independent offerings) Dailuaine is one of the many hard-working distilleries which quietly provide fillings for blends. That doesn’t mean it is in any way boring.
The set-up – six large stills, condensers – suggests that a light style should be produced, but instead it produces a heavy ‘meaty’ make thanks to long fermentation, rapid distillation and the use of stainless steel in the condensers to cut down on copper interaction. That Flora & Fauna bottling (from ex-Sherry casks) shows this mix of richness and sweetness at its best.
At the end of the 19th century, Dailuaine was the largest single malt distillery in Speyside and also one of the most innovative in terms of design. It was built in 1851 by William Mackenzie and by the 1860s was being serviced by the Strathspey railway.
A complete rebuild in 1884 saw the installation of Scotland’s first pagoda on a kiln whose pitch was deliberately steep to minimise the contact time between peat smoke and drying malt, one of the clearest indications of how the old ‘Strathspey’ style was changing. In 1898, it merged with Talisker to form Dailuaine-Talisker Distilleries Ltd. The distillery perished in a fire in 1917, by which time it had become part of DCL. Saladin maltings ran from 1959 to 1970.
Dailuaine is also home to a dark grains plant and processes all of the spent grains from Diageo’s southern and central sites. If you see clouds of smoke rising from a riverside glen as you drive by the slopes of Ben Rinnes, that’s Dailuaine at work.
59.4% ABV
