Friday, May 22, 2015

New Whiskey Labels: Parker's Heritage, Laphroaig, Green Spot and More


This week's most interesting new labels from the federal TTB database:

Heaven Hill released the label for this year's Parker's Heritage Collection, an eight year old straight malt whiskey with a mashbill of 65% barley and 35% corn, bottled at 108 proof.

Beam Suntory released a label for a cask strength, 32 year old Laphroaig aged in Oloroso sherry casks.

Balvenie released a number of new labels including Batch 2 of their Tun 1509 and a new series called DCS (for the Balvenie's David C. Stewart) Compendium. This series will apparently include five "chapters," the first of which is a series of whiskies aged in refill American oak and includes the following vintages: 1968, 1978, 1985, 1997, and 2005.

Pernod Ricard cleared a label for Green Spot Single Pot Still Irish Whiskey finished in Bordeaux casks.

Compass Box cleared a label for the newest of edition of their Flaming Heart blended malt, to be bottled in July.

Glenfiddich cleared a label for Bourbon Barrel Reserve, aged 14 years in bourbon casks and finished in American new charred oak.

Fans of paying a premium for mystery whiskey are in luck, Prometheus is headed for our shores.  The 26 year old single malt from an undisclosed distillery goes for almost $600 overseas.

Note:  The fact that a label appears on the TTB database does not necessarily mean it will be produced.  In addition, some details on the label, such as proof, can change in the final product.


4 comments:

Anonymous said...

It appears Glenfiddich is attempting to snag a share of some of the bourbon mania around the world. Bourbon Barrel Reserve - Aged in ex bourbon casks and finished in American new charred oak? All they need to do now is add corn to the distillation process and they'll be set!

Really not knocking it, since it does sound like a worthwhile product. It just doesn't seem to sound much like a Scotch.

Anonymous said...

Anon,
As you may or may not know ex-bourbon cask matured single malts are very old news. And of late this is, at least, the third recent ex-bourbon cask release by Glenfiddich.
And Glenmorangie, Glenlivet, Macallan, Kavalan, Bowmore, Bruichladdich, BenRiach, Amrut, Auchetoshan, Arran, Springbank (to name a few) haven't shy about rolling out fully matured ex-bourbon cask releases lately either.
Not everything produced in bourbon casks or finished in new oak is worthy of a Serge-style shitting on. It's a style of single malt maturation that many people enjoy drinking.

Anonymous said...

Yep. I did know scotch producers have been using ex-bourbon casks for many, many years, but thanks for the more detailed info. I guess, for me, it was the addition of the "finished in American new charred oak," on top of using ex-bourbon casks, that I thought brought it to a different level. The finishing in that fashion would seem to add an even stronger bourbon-style element to the scotch.

Not a big deal, however, since I already posted I thought it sounded like a worthwhile product. I didn't mean for it to sound like I was bagging on Glenfiddich, since I like them quite a bit. Hard to argue that Bourbon has surged (and is surging) in popularity worldwide. Also hard to argue with a scotch producer's decision to try and tilt some of that market toward their product.

Cheers!

Jason Q. said...

I'm intensely curious about the PHC release. Anyone have an idea what it'll be like?