Cadenhead’s Seven Stars 30yo
Blended Scotch Whisky | 48.2% ABV
Score: 6/10
Good stuff.
TL;DR
A good sherried blend, but not one to be too precious about
The collector in me
I’ve had a propensity to collect from a young age. As a child in school it was things such as football stickers and Pogs, which moved into old football programs as a teenager. I am also terrible at throwing things away, which drives my wife mad.
I have boxes and tins full of items from my childhood that I collected and they will always be with me. I still have some of my old school books because I think they may be interesting to look back at one day, and shoe boxes full of medals from football tournaments and running events that never see the light of day. I think this collecting trait plays a small part, for me, in the appeal of whisky.
I have a very modest sized whisky collection and none of it relates to what may be valuable in the future. Collecting for future financial gain in 2023 seems like folly to me, with whisky being in a boom period, which is already starting to show signs of softening. We’ve already talked about auctions on Dramface and the prices being better now for drinkers than they have been for some time, but has anybody else also noticed their inboxes being bombarded with whisky sales more than ever in recent months?
Almost every day a new email pops in offering savings, some of which are tempting, and others not so much. Now we have come out of periods of lock down and isolation, I get the sense many people are focusing on other things. Not to mention budgets being tightened by our cost of living crisis which shows no sign of abating.
When it comes to making money, as with most things, you have to buy during the dip, and that dip was when whisky wasn’t trendy. If you want to collect anything for financial gain, you need to be ahead of the curve. Buying Bitcoin before most people had ever heard of it, buying stocks in Apple and Microsoft before the big tech boom. The list of examples goes on, and I’m not smart enough to know what the next big thing will be.
I think it would stress me out trying to buy whisky as an investment and attempting to work out what will go up in value. I suspect the whiskies everybody is collecting are not the ones people will covet in decades to come, principally because there will be loads of them out there sitting on collectors shelves.
Instead, I prefer to collect what I like, and almost every bottle is one I have tried before and thought it was of such quality that I wanted to have at least one more on the shelf to go back to in years to come. I see it as a sort of reference library of some of the best whisky from throughout my journey. I don’t like having sealed bottles of whisky on the shelf that I have never tasted. I may try to keep some new bottles unopened for a few months while I finish off others, but it eats away at me until I eventually give in and open it. After all, I bought it because I wanted to know what it tastes like.
I like having bottles around me, and around 75% are open. I will walk into my room, stare at the shelves, maybe pick up a bottle or two and read the label, and straighten a few bottles that aren't lined up perfectly. When the evening comes, the toddler is tucked up in bed and I am winding down, it’s great to have a good choice of bottles to select from. I’m as happy as a kid in a sweet shop.
Many will say that whisky is not for collecting, it is only for drinking. True story, but that doesn’t mean we can’t or shouldn’t hold onto some bottles for the future if we so choose. If all whisky was consumed as soon as it was purchased, we would never be able to try the whiskies from the past. Come 2033 or even 2043, I might wonder what Ledaig 10 or Kilkerran 12 tasted like a decade or two ago. Has it changed? Has it become better, worse, or remained about the same? I will be able to find out because I have held onto a bottle. Then again, it may never be a perfect comparison when even sealed whisky changes in glass over a number of years, but that’s another story.
The decision to buy multiples of anything is always a difficult one, as it diverts my budget away from buying a new experience, but at least I know that when I do want a good whisky, I will have one at hand ready to be opened and shared.
Review
Cadenhead’s Seven Stars, Blended Scotch Whisky, 48.2% ABV
£85 sold out
There have been the odd times where I have hesitated when opening a new bottle, and this is one such whisky. The knowledge that once it is open, the clock has started ticking. This bottle will never be sealed and nestled safely in the collection again. You probably can’t replace it. This is your only chance with it.
I remember hearing about this 30 year old cask strength blend from Cadenhead’s when it was first publicised on social media earlier this year. I was interested, but thought the price would be comfortably into three figures and thought little more about it. I then saw another post closer to the release date which mentioned a price of £85. Not an insignificant sum of money at all, but now I was really, really interested.
Often with these Cadenhead’s outturns, as I have noticed with the more desirable recent Springbank and Kilkerran they have bottled under their own label, they don’t even make it to online retail. You have to live in Campbeltown, Edinburgh or London and be able to get to a shop, or perhaps have a good relationship with someone who can put one aside. This isn’t my reality, so again, I thought I wouldn’t be able to get one.
However, on the morning of release, I looked on the website and there it was in all its glory. I couldn’t put my payment details in fast enough thinking this would be gone in moments. Thirty year old scotch whisky at cask strength for £85, who isn’t buying that? In reality, it remained on the virtual shelf for a few days. I could have bought several if I had the money or the inclination. The word blend still turns up many a nose, even when the value is as outstanding as this example. I sense things are starting to slowly change on that front, but single malt and provenance to a distillery will always rule supreme.
A few days later it arrived, but rather than viewing it as an £85 bottle of whisky, I was looking at it as a 30 year old whisky, which is something I am possibly never going to be able to afford ever again. My thinking was that I should save this one for the future and find a special moment to open it with others. The problem is those moments rarely come, and when they do the act of sharing whisky with friends will always overshadow the liquid itself. A few months after this one hit my shelf I overcame that stumbling block in my mind and it was finally opened.
This isn’t from Cadenhead’s own stocks and was purchased in cask already blended. I have no idea what is in it, and I am not sure if Cadenhead’s do either. If they do, perhaps they can’t say. It could be from ubiquitous Edrington stocks and contain the likes of Macallan, Highland Park, Glenturret or Glenrothes. It has very obviously been mostly matured in sherry casks for some, if not all of its 30 or more years.
Score: 6/10
Good stuff.
TL;DR
A good sherried blend, but not one to be too precious about
Nose
Rich toffee, slightly overdone honeycomb, werther’s original butter candies and burnt rubber tyres. The sulphur sensitive might be a little offended, but it isn’t overpowering and I like it. This bottle has been open a few months and it has diminished. There’s also wood polish, putty and leather, with orange peel, stewed plums, dates, clove and balsamic.
Palate
More of the rich, sweet toffee on the palate, followed by lots of bitter dark chocolate and leather, with some more of the burnt rubber, and a prominent struck match note. I also get savoury dried mushrooms, liquorice and peppery spice. There is a fair amount of fruitiness in there, with more of the orange and boozy dried fruits. The finish is slightly drying, with the dark chocolate and leather coming back strongly, and the gunpowder remaining in the background throughout.
The Dregs
It’s a good whisky, but that is about as far as I would go with it. There is nothing exceptional here, but it is an enjoyable dram, and I am particularly liking the big chocolate note on the palate. If you don’t like sulphurous whiskies then this probably isn’t one for you. You do have to like that gunpowder thing.
The palate reminds me of the 33 year old Vega blended malt from North Star, which is another that took me some time to open, until I finally popped the cork to celebrate the birth of my daughter in 2020. This could potentially be from similar stocks. This is a blended scotch rather than a blended malt, but I am not picking up the grain at all, and it may be the case that there is very little, if any, in there.
Despite enjoying this, I have dozens of whiskies on my shelf which are better, and I am glad I was able to get over that brief hesitation and view it from the lens of an £85 bottle of whisky, rather than something to be held back for a special occasion.
Score: 6/10
Tried this? Share your thoughts in the comments below. RT
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