Bourbon and STR Wine Cask Limited Releases | 49.4% ABV

Score: 5/10

**Average. In a good way..**
***TL;DR***
*Interesting to explore the components. Needs more grip to excite*

Thank you for not shopping locally.

Having a distillery that’s nearby is a huge privilege. We’re all here because of whisky and the fact there’s a place making the stuff a short car’s drive away from my house means I’m one of the lucky few with convenient access to our uisge beatha.

Some would give their non-drinking arm to just nip down to their local distillery. Some might never be able to get over to this magical place of whisky. So for me, it’s incredibly fortunate to be born, bred and live in this most lauded country where such things are local. Only… I’ve never been to my local distillery.

Foul play, old chap. I know - it’s a bit silly I’ve visited places such as Ardnamurchan, Springbank and Kingsbarns, all places that take a lot of time and effort to get to, yet I’ve never been to the place that’s a quick jaunt in the car. I even cycle past it most weekends on my Sunday morning route. Each time I divert down the path to look at the tall copper stills through the modern, saw-blade facade, I say to myself: “It’s about time I visited.”

Lindores Abbey is on the outskirts of Newburgh, a small fishing village nestled on the hilly south bank of the River Tay in Scotland. Newburgh is a beautiful place. The main drag features colourfully painted houses with off-shooting side streets that, on one side of the main street head up a hill, and on the other, rolls down the hill almost to the water’s edge. By road you travel the whole length of Newburgh in a hot minute and, if you’re approaching from the west, arrive at the road that splits off towards the distillery shortly after. You can see the distillery long before you get there thanks to a blackened timber facade and gigantic white lettering that reads “Lindores Abbey Distillery” - even Google Maps has sight of it.

Interestingly enough, not that long ago another distillery popped up near to Newburgh in the even smaller village of Aberargie - the Morrison Scotch Distillers group building a very agriculturally sympathetic group of green painted, corrugated metal sheds with large windows on one gable end revealing the gleaming copper stills within. This distillery isn’t open to the public yet, but it is distilling.

To think I’ll soon have lots of distilleries nearby to me in the coming years is such an exciting prospect: Lindores, Aberargie, Deanston up at Doune, Edradour and Blair Athol at Pitlochry, Daftmill stationed east inside Fife, Kingsbarns even further, as well as Inchdairnie - again inaccessible to joe public. The Adelphi bottling plant is down on the coast of the Firth of Forth, and Diageo’s Cameronbridge is nearby as well. Whisky is everywhere! I’ve been aware of Lindores for a wee while now because I bought a bottle of their Aqua Vitae in 2020 during my gin phase - a spicy herbal concoction that works great either as a strange spirit drink, or as a highball.

“When they finally hit the market, there was a flurry of purchasing, but the strangest thing happened - a week after the launch there were still quite a lot of commemorative bottlings around in online shops, and there were oodles of standard bottlings too.”

— not what we've been used to

It was in the midpoint of my whisky acquisition phase when Lindores Abbey launched their inaugural whisky and I was really quite excited about it. I’d been around long enough to see the fierce grab for Springbank and Daftmill as well as the popularity of other new whisky launches that I’d missed by several months. But I’d never been around for a new distillery launch. History was about to be made. I expected the Lindores bottles to follow the trend - fastest finger first, and in quite a clever move to assuage the flipper hatred and cater to the drinkers too, Lindores released two versions of their first whisky.

Helpfully named Lindores Abbey MCDXCIV - easy to remember and off the tongue it doth roll - there was both a standard release and a commemorative release; the same whisky but with a slightly different label. When they finally hit the market, there was a flurry of purchasing, but the strangest thing happened - a week after the launch there were still quite a lot of commemorative bottlings around in online shops, and there were oodles of the standard bottle too.

I was in the mix for the launch and managed to get one of the standard bottles, opening it a few days after I received it and finding it really very tasty. However, I wondered why there wasn’t the fever pitch excitement for Lindores as there had been all the other launches. What was it about Lindores that left bottles sitting on shelves? Maybe it was a larger initial outturn, or maybe there was some other reason for it. Regardless, I enjoyed that bottle and, when empty, I used it for my first infinity bottle.

I’ve kept my eyes on Lindores since and I seriously considered joining their 1494 Membership, with the numbered and black-painted bottles and little perks tantalising me, but ultimately the £500 membership fee was just too high. Since sold out, the membership offered invitations to the “Bear Burning” and ceilidh evening of fun and frolics as well as discounts, exclusive access to new bottles and other perks.

Review

When Lindores announced their plan to release a higher strength, exclusively bourbon cask matured whisky, I was all over it. I bought a bottle from Kinnaird Head Whiskies and once I’d rinsed that in short order, another bottle was purchased to replace it. Then, when Lindores announced plans to release another cask strength whisky this time exclusively matured in an STR (shaved, toasted and re-charred) wine barrique, I was all over that too. Both of these bottlings were released under “The Casks of Lindores” title and are presented at a “limited edition strength” of 49.4%. I wondered why they'd settled on such a weirdly specific percentage for this range but now I see it - it’s the 1494 club thing. What is this 1494 date anyway?

Lindores Abbey, a ruined smattering of walls and mature gardens across the road from the distillery, was originally a Tironensian abbey, owing to the medieval order the monks inside practiced and named after the mother monastery in France - Tiron Abbey. Lindores Abbey Distillery states on their website that their distillery is the spiritual home of whisky given that one of the monks was tasked by King James IV to produce some Aqua Vitae using “bolls” of local malt. The year that this request is written in the Exchequer Roll, is 1494.

It’s a bold move to call yourselves the spiritual home of whisky when you’ve only really been distilling in this century for five years. That there was evidence to see that distilling happened on this site 523 years prior is a nice note of history, but it’s a bit “Ship of Theseus” but as a marketing move, it’s a banger. It’s fine calling yourself the spiritual home of whisky, even if there’s places like Glenturret, that have been consistently distilling whisky from the same site since 1775, but it only works if the whisky is up to snuff.

The launch release was nice whisky - nothing too complex or challenging, but a nice sipping dram of pleasant niceness. What does the extra 3.4% offer us? This whisky is presented as the separated component strains of the three maturation styles that make up the core range - bourbon, STR wine barrique and sherry butts. Will the quality of spirit shine through, or is it really a case of more than the sum of its parts? I only have access to the first two, but maybe we’ll see the sherry edition appear soon to complete the set. I’m not sure how much I’ll be interested in picking that one up, but more on that later.

Lindores - The Casks of Lindores Bourbon Cask, 49.4% ABV
£50 generally available

Nose

Nicely spicy with a funkiness - hay and slight farmyard. Vanilla and sweet things, but a tangy note cuts through. Apples - cooking a baked apple pie. The next day the tang seems to have receded, leaving vanilla cream in its wake.

Palate

Bright and fruity - green and yellow fruits - the tangy, salty taste of a match strike, but loads of malty, hay-like delicious balanced notes and a tanginess remains on the finish. I think of buttery cobs of sweetcorn with fresh cracked pepper. It’s delicious. The next day the match strike has gone, with the vanilla remaining, much like the nose.

Score: 5/10

Lindores - The Casks of Lindores, STR Cask, 49.4% ABV
£50 generally available

Nose

A bit more happening here but the same foundation - a bit of farmyard, vanilla and sweet things, but an identifiable toffee popcorn too. The wine barrique makes its mark with berries, red fruits and hint of some raisins there too. The next day it feels sharper, a bit more astringent.

Palate

The same follows for the taste - the green and yellow fruits are replaced with red and orange fruits - the tangy salt is replaced with an almost clovey type taste - herbal even, but it’s still sweet with more spice on the tail end. The next day it feels sharper - like a decaying red wine.

Score: 5/10

The Dregs

I think these whiskies can be categories as “mood drams” for me. The bourbon cask is moreish, and surprisingly easy to quaff even at a higher ABV. It’s not hot or edgy, but smooth and silky. I love the vanilla and toffee in abundance, and I really like the edge of funkiness that waves around in the background - farmyard and yoghurt vibes. But it shifts the following day and a lot of that interest has almost gone, leaving a simpler, easier to process malt. The environment and prior whiskies I’ve been enjoying definitely have a swing on how this malt presents itself and despite the higher ABV, there’s still something missing - that grip or edge that would raise the brow slugs more.

I prefer the bourbon version, but that fits with my current course in whisky. I’m moving slowly away from the more heavily sherried, winey offerings as I find them just a bit too cloying and overtly RAISIN. However, I’d happily work my way through things like the Abbey Whisky exclusive Bimber which was entirely matured in sherry casks, or whiskies using sherry components such as Glen Garioch or Craigellachie. I guess it depends on the distillate, the region and the cask influence - never a more obvious thing has been said by anyone in whisky ever, but there it is. I like poised and balanced sherry drams, rather than bombs.

The Casks of Lindores Bourbon and STR expressions are solid, if a little tame. They are whiskies that give a good insight into the formula that makes up the Lindores core range MCDXCIV. They’re still young and nothing has a greater impact on the depth and complexity of a whisky than time spent inside oak, so I’m excited to see what happens to this whisky in another five years. Things should develop to offer that extra layer of interest and grip I’m missing here, and I’ll be seeking them out and buying. For now, these bottlings remain tasty, rounded and quite interesting, but nothing that’ll set you alight or grab your face receptors as you drink.

The scoring? Well I batted this one around for ages - it’s whisky that is tasty and moreish and the very nature of that means I gravitate towards a higher than average score of six. However, given that this is £50 NAS whisky that, although tasty and moreish doesn’t have me swooning over it, means I must keep myself in line with the Dramface scoring system. This is positively average whisky with flashes of promise, but does sit comfortably in the middle of the pack. There’s a few interesting notes but it just doesn’t excite me as much as things like the Craigellachie 13 and the Bas Armagnac extension, or even the NAS Arran Quarter Cask which was a proper banger. No, this sits perfectly beside things Clydeside Stobcross, GlenDronach 12yo and many other middle-of-the-road, 5/ 10 whiskies. Positively average, but excited for what’s yet to come.

Score: 5/10

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

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