Amid all the rising whisky prices and the growing NAS segment, we’ve seen another trend going strong lately: independent bottlings of young whisky, from 5 year old up to 10 year old.

It shouldn’t surprise us as whisky casks prices has risen too, for both new make and aged spirit barrels. The reasoning is simple: bottle it at younger age, maybe even bottle at lower ABV and so it’s cheaper and you can extract more bottles from each cask.

Today’s Bunnahabhaim from Van Wees The Ultimate brand is a classic example of such whisky, distilled 26/06/2006, aged in cask 2127, bottled 4/6/2015 at the tender age of 8 year old (although it was 22 days far from being 9 year old) yielding 815 bottles due to 46% bottling strength.

Bunnahabhain 2006 8 Year Old The Ultimate (46%, €39.20)

Nose: It’s young alright with lots of malt notes, sweet malt, bread, cereals and barley sugar. There’s even some roughness but hey, here comes the sherry impact with mellow and sweet dried fruit, some plums, raisins, very subtle comparing to the strong maltiness and is noticeable just enough to balance it out. Continue reading →

In the last year or two there’s a worrying (at least for me) trend of rising whisky prices. The new prices today are, how to say it, a bit on the expensive side. This leads me into serious exploration of independent bottlers which usually have a lesser price tag.

I’ve heard very good things on the Dutch bottler Van Wees but never had the opportunity to taste them as their bottlings are not available locally. But lately a friend brought 2 bottles and I was happy to help him taking care of the bottles 🙂

The first one is  a young Bunnahabhain which carry its young age statement proudly: 5 years old and not hiding behind a NAS excuse.

It was matured in Bourbon cask (#800103), distilled Feb 2008 and bottled Nov 2013. Let’s see how this young one behaves.

The Ultimate Van Wees Bunnahabhain 2008 (46%, 323 bottles, buy for € 32.50 here)

Continue reading →