Timing

Timing is everything

Right cask, right time.

During maturation, monitoring casks activity (the speed at which the wealth of flavours from the cask are extracted by the maturing whisky) is incredibly important. We endeavour to bottle at the point where the wood and spirit flavours are perfectly balanced for the style of whisky sought.

Timing is everything.

Across our range the type of cask and the distillery character will vary, however, our experience has given us a detailed understanding of the maturation process to guide us. This means we can determine when our whiskies are ready maintaining the highest quality in every single bottle.

By watching the film and studying the graph, along with the key below, you will gain an insight into Scotch whisky maturation.

Cask management

Every cask has a fate, and every cask develops differently. Of several comparable casks filled with the same batch of spirit, some may yield the perfect whisky after ten years, whereas some take a little longer to reach their extraordinary potential.

Cask management is the process of sampling casks as they mature, deciding when to bottle our whisky, or simply to leave alone.

Learning to leave a cask to reach its full potential, undeterred by demand or necessity, is the hardest skill of all and one in which we pride ourselves. It is a skill born of experience and rooted in our unique liquid library, which helps our highly skilled team determine the fate of each individual cask in our portfolio.

The longer a whisky is in cask, the more sampling is required in order to get the bottling time just right to ensure a complex, subtle and balanced whisky.