Ex-Oloroso Sherry Casks | 58.2% ABV

Getting Back on the Lowland Saddle

An amber weather warning sounds as the remnants of an Atlantic “explosive cyclogenesis” wraps its windy fingers around the Western Isles and, stepping out into the raging storm, I take a wet leaf missile straight to the face.

I’m on my way to collect our weekly shop from the shinty club car park; the refrigerated vans have travelled all the way from Dingwall to deliver our bread and milk. It seems illogical, but that’s the nearest Supermarché to us, and having our shopping driven 100 miles is half as expensive as shopping locally. Tourist tax is real, sure, but twenty household’s worth of shopping arriving in two vans is a lot more economical than twenty cars individually travelling 200 miles to wave their clubcard points around.

Rounding the bend on the road that weaves down to Portree, the elevated view reveals a scene biblical in nature and it’s a challenge not to stop dead in my tracks. The weather moves fast up here, but I’ve never seen anything like it, and the scale is enough to make me bark a rude word into the cabin. I make a note to check the dashcam footage when I get home, but then realise my potty mouth will incriminate me, and instead file it in the lossy brain.

An unbroken, mile-wide cascading waterfall descends from the heavens and streaks across the dappled steel sky in undulating waves, falling all the way to the sea. A section of this monumental curtain of water is backlit by shafts of the low morning sun, illuminating the surrounding amber wilds in increments of vibrant autumnal colour. Portree is thrown into silhouette and the few spires and blocky outlines of houses break the otherwise rolling landscape; the Cuillins loom large and menacing in the slate-grey distance. It’s a constantly shifting dynamic painting of arresting beauty.

I would show you this, had I remembered to bring my phone or my camera but, alas, I didn't, so you’ll just have to take my word. So many of these scenes have played out since we moved to the outer reaches of the British Isles, but never do I take them for granted. It’s a constant reminder that we live in a staggeringly beautiful, remote place. Not that I needed reminding; the Tesco man mentions that the bridge will shut later on, disconnecting our island from the mainland, albeit temporarily. #islandlife.

After a day of preparations, the slow darkness descends and the wind picks up. The gloom eventually converts our windows into giant black flexing mirrors of fear, and we cross our fingers that the glass is pliant enough to rebuff the howling gale ripping across the valley. I’ve watched the light fade from one position all afternoon, as I assess what’s in my copitas, and the puffs of fresh air forcing through the chibbed window is perfect accompaniment to get a proper feel for the whisky.

It’s closer to two years ago than it is one, when I journeyed with the Kinnaird Head Whiskies boys for an evening at Kingsbarns Distillery. Two years but feels like yesterday; not even the flood of minds-eye picture slideshows from moving 220 miles to an island has stood in the way of the Kingsbarns memory anchor. But despite that, it’s been a long time since I sang about Kingsbarns Distillery. I’ve sort of forgotten that they’re around.

That’s not a criticism of Kingsbarns. They’ve been putting out whisky since then that has been varied and interesting: The Doocot, a core range replacement for the Dream to Dram staple that launched Kingsbarns into the whisky world, has been around and available, £43 and 46% natural colour, non chill-filtered, and I don’t know why I don’t have one in my stash.

Their tasty 46% discontinued Bell Rock expression was released as a cask strength iteration costing £70, it’s a bit more demanding an ask - uncle raves about it and always gets a dram in Diggers when we go. They also launched their first peated whisky in the forest green guise of Coaltown, what I suspect is the peaty counterpart to the Doocot, and commanding the same price of £43. Now swinging out with their oldest expression to date, through another of their Distillery Exclusives, the 2024 bottle arrives at my door unexpectedly and without warning, as an incoming Dramface bottle redirected to the Misty Isle.

This will be the second bottle of Distillery Exclusive Kingsbarns that I’ve tried, having won a bottle of their 2022 Distillery Exclusive after our special night at the distillery. They ran a competition for the best picture of the evening, and being the only punter with a camera, won with a photograph of their oily Doocot, poured pre-launch that night to the assembled Kingsbarns Founder’s in recognition of their support. We also tried cask #1, wheeled out in celebration of a fine night of whisky and music, and I was in awe of what they’d achieved so far. Kingsbarns appeared on my radar like a depth charge.

Review

Kingsbarns Distillery Reserve, 2024 Limited Edition, 3,000 Outturn, 6 American ex-Oloroso Sherry Casks, 58.2% ABV
£75 - widely available

Surfing high on the wave of a glorious night spent with Gaz, Matthew and James, I ordered their Balcomie Cask Strength to add to the Balcomie 46% that I’d won in the latest auction and, when my prize arrived, sipped the three bottles together. In the renewal of Spring, with a year ahead of whisky events that would culminate in our move to the Isle of Skye, the prospect of a new distillery to champion was exciting. The 2022 Distillery Reserve won my heart. The Balcomie duo broke it.

Since then I’ve not really chased any Kingsbarns whisky, not because I’m bitter, but because I’ve been chasing other things; when something kills my joy I tend to move on and seek pastures new, and the hot Balcomie twofer unfortunately arrived at a point in my life when doctors called me an Old Fat Bastard and I had to reconcile the fact that my blasted knee would accompany me into the big whisky cloud in the sky. Maybe my dismay of ageing dragged the Balcomie down with it.

This 2024 Distillery Reserve is 8 years old, not that you’d know because nowhere on box or bottle does it say this. Nor does it mention in any of the carefully crafted words on the rear label that this is the oldest whisky they’ve put out so far, which is a strange omission. As we see Lindores sticking a big “6” on their club bottling, and many more embracing the single-digit age statement, keeping all mention from the vicinity of this bottle is even more surprising.

Perusing the Kingsbarns website just to double check it actually is 8 years old, perplexingly, I still can’t find any mention of age, just that it’s the most mature Kingsbarns release to date. I have to flick through the Dramface news pages before visiting the Falkirk Herald to corroborate the age. I know age is just a number and I very much avoid using age as an indication of quality, but 8 years is still a milestone to celebrate in a time when a wobbling Scotch whisky industry is putting huge strain on exports and buying habits, but most of all for young ones still finding their place in the grand landscape.

Speaking of Falkirk, I’m surprised to see something called Falkland, which I’ve never seen advertised or promoted anywhere, again using local barley and two types of casks - 80% bourbon and 20% STR ex-Portuguese red wine barriques. What happened there then? It’s £50 and exciter aligned too, but totally opaque in its existence to me, and I’ve never heard it spoken of. It’s all very perplexing that, like Lindores, Kingsbarns never come up in enthusiast chats, and it’s all the more baffling when I see the prices; when there’s some dubious gouging happening and inaugural releases arriving in triple-digits, Kingsbarns can’t possibly be held accountable for opportunism.

The Falkland is £50. The Doocot and Coaltown are £46 and their higher ABV expressions - cask strength, single casks and this 2024 Distillery reserve are around £65-£80. That, I think, is fantastic. So much is spoken about whisky in regards to price, and where generally things should rest for young, bold whisky - seeing the prices Kingsbarns are demanding for their wares, they’re sitting right in the sweet spot. For a Lowland whisky that uses local water, local barley and distils on the east coast in beautiful surroundings, it’s a shame they fall outside of the radar.

I suppose it’s always going to be challenging to be heard amongst the almost daily releases from every distillery, with some launches demanding a lot of debate due to houfing prices or confounding choices - Ardbeg clamouring for relevance or Speyburn allegedly hacking their lauded wares down to 40%, or Highland Park rebranding to look sensational beside Grandma’s beige loafers. Slipping a Coaltown or Falkland out into that firestorm must be an upwards struggle. Nonetheless, I look at the blue livery of the 2024 Distillery Exclusive, a statement of maturity from Kingsbarns (even if they don’t want to speak the words of age), and really hope that it brings their whisky back into my sphere of interest.

Nose

Smells like Kingsbarns Distillery. Coconut toffee. Gorse. Wet wood. Huge orange zest. Christmas bowl - star anise, cloves, cinnamon, mulled wine. Toasted orange oak. Oven chips. Rocky. Driftwood - salty, sandy. Catnip!? Balsamic.

Palate

Tastes like Kingsbarns Distillery. Liquorice. Lush red juicy apples. Orange juice, peel. Cinnamon, pepper spice. Cedar woods, salty seaside lick. Bit of tropical farmy in the background. Rocks and mineralic - flinty. Bit of leather, bit of strawberry jam on over-toasted scone. Wine gum sweets, toffees, brown sugars, all the good stuff.

The Dregs

The first thing that grabs me with the Distillery Reserve is the immediacy of flashback to January 2023. I really felt like I was back in the distillery, sniffing casks, speed walking with Gaz to Cask #1 and laughing my stupid head off.

To get some reference going I’ve dug into the back of the garage stash and unpeeled the electrical tape still wrapped around the Balcomie Cask Strength from moving to the Misty Isle. I see that the Balcomie used American ex-Oloroso butts, which the 2024 Distillery Reserve also uses - 6 casks for a total outturn of 3,000 bottles.

Even the ABV’s are close, with the Distillery Reserve at 58.2% ABV and the Balcomie CS at 59.9% ABV. This makes this a bit of a tet-a-tet then, given how close the two whiskies are in production, with just the age of the whisky being the differentiator.

Starting with a quick refresher of what I felt last time I tried the Balcomie CS in March 2023, I see that it was an altogether disappointing affair. I suppose against the stoater of the 2020 Distillery Reserve, in all its dark deliciousness, anything would pale. Perhaps the 2020 Distillery Reserve was a bit of a unique release, as we so often see with little sparks of genius amongst the releases from young distilleries: Glasgow’s Manzanilla Small Batch or Clydeside’s Napier or Lagg’s Corriecravie, things that boost their reputations significantly.

On the nose the Balcomie CS is a lot more subdued compared to the 2024 Distillery Reserve. A tight nose in the former, you might say, compared to the thick, burgeoning fragrant nose coming out of the latter. The Balcomie CS also renders sweeter on the nose, with more jammy redness versus a peppery darker red from the 2024 Distillery Reserve. The latter’s pepper does make way for thick, dense red jam after a while.

Palate wise the Balcomie CS is big potatoes vividly red hot. I remember now why it was such a task to score this back in March ‘23, because it’s visceral in arrival, and the eyes do water a wee bit. The heat does settle and a big fresh jammy scone appears, salty flecks and big chewy currants included, but the heat is a serious problem, so I plop a few drops of water in to try and tame it.

Turning to the 2024 Distillery Reserve, the arrival is a lot less hot and a lot more thick, dense, chewy woody and jammy. It’s not prickly at all, instead floating into the facepipe like a big silk ribbon. I’m savouring the flavour of this, transporting me back to that wonderful night in the East Neuk of Fife. It’s peppery on the palate too and deliciously caramelised woodland orchard - apples, pears, plums, pie crust and toasted oak.

Water has opened up the Balcomie CS in a wild way that I never experienced before: big sweet stewed red apples. It’s right there in my face and mirrors the Distillery Reserve in the orchards - an indication of the Kingsbarns base spirit character. It’s also at this point that I start to notice the gap widening between the two. Where the Distillery Reserve maintains a robust, thick composure with a wonderful woody base upon which the red juiciness builds, the Balcomie starts to reveal its youthful exuberance in the way of a farmy, tropical new-make flavour. But here’s the kicker: I love it!

Maybe it’s the mood I’m in, or the time in glass, or the development of my palate in the past year and a half, but the Balcomie CS is doing some great work today. The apple pie of it all is hitting me right in the feels - it is Sunday after all. Water is the key to this whisky and reviewing the tasting notes of my 2023 review, I see that I noted that it took a while for the nose to awaken, and that water revealed more interesting stuff - dousing that heat away. Really enjoying this whisky and today it’s giving me a perfectly ripe orange juice, peel, zest and pith. It’s young and it’s vibrant and it’s delicious.

Back to the 2024 Distillery Reserve and I’ve added some water to see what happens. The water takes the robust entry down a notch or two, but keeps the woody base with peppery redness. The water has released more tropical orange fruits and maybe a bit of leather. It feels like its at rest, all in all more mature. Which is obvious because it’s likely double the age - alas I can’t seem to find any indication of the Balcomie CS’s age anywhere.

So what to make of it? Well I’m thoroughly upset at having neglected Kingsbarns Distillery. Yes their whisky might be “young”, but honestly their character of big orchard blasters hits me right in the feels this time, and I’m loving every sip of both whiskies. The Balcomie CS is a young, saturated, vibrant tropical whisky and that heat does take some fiddling to tamp down to a manageable level, but once you hit it, my goodness, do the flavours arrive in spades.

The 2024 Distillery Reserve is like the older sibling of the Balcomie CS, with more time under their belt, more composure, a more worldly gait and less of the neon, singular nature. It’s more woody, has more chew, hangs around a lot longer and has little fire whilst still delivering spice, pepper and grip. I wonder how it would fare against the 2020 Distillery Reserve in its STR Barrique richness, and I also wonder if the 2020 was more cask than it was Kingsbarns. The 2024 iteration feels like a more honest expression, not using any overt cask influence to steer (or mask) its character, instead allowing the engaging, fresh, rocky Lowland Kingsbarns character to remain intact whilst serving up some lovely Oloroso yum yum.

Price. £75 direct from Kingsbarns. Their 2020 release was £65, and the Balcomie Cask Strength commanded £65 when it was released, so that this 2024 Distillery Reserve asks just £10 more for their most mature stock released to date, I think is a fair request. This is a highly enjoyable whisky. It feels like it’s the most Kingsbarns whisky I’ve tried that connects me directly back to the distillery. If that’s something you’re interested in, or want to get into, or already enjoy, I think this release will be right up your tropical street. Dare I say it, a very good contender for a festive, Christmas Day dram.

If you want a fabulously visceral supersmash of orchard fruits and enjoy a bit of tinkering, find the Balcomie Cask Strength somewhere and get the pipette out. It’s something to experience with a more mature palate. With that truth accepted, and knowing I need to start spreading my wings again, I think it's time I got back on the Kingsbarns track. Very good indeed.

Score: 7/10

Tried this? Share your thoughts in the comments below. DC

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