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1 Fresh Bourbon Barrel Of Bruichladdich 2004 - 20 Year Old - Cask 639 - Held In Bond



Lot ID:
0125-535

shipping rate:
0

Total Bids:
223   

Winning Bid
£11,200.00


End Date : Feb 19 2025 08:10 PM

We may have sold this bottle before. Click the graph below to view our sales history.


CONDITION

NA.

LOT DESCRIPTION

One cask of Bruichladdich Single Malt Scotch Whisky distilled in 2004 currently maturing at Bruichladdich Distillery in Scotland. Annual storage fees currently stand at £36.29 per year and the new owner must make arrangements directly with the warehouse after the sale. Contact details will be given by the current cask owner.

This cask was re-gauged 08/01/2025. The new re-gauged litres were found to be approximately 142 bulk litres at a strength of 59.3%. This would currently yield approximately 202 x 70cl bottles of cask strength whisky, currently at 20 years old. 

  • Distillery: Bruichladdich
  • Originally filled: 30/6/2004
  • Current age: 20 years old
  • Cask number: 639
  • Cask type: Fresh Bourbon Barrel
  • Original filled with:141.4 litres of alcohol 
  • Current cask strength: 59.3%
  • Original bulk Litres: 197 litres
  • New re-gauged bulk litres: 142 litres
  • Currently yielding: Approximately 202 x 70cl bottles

Ownership of this cask is auctioned here in bond. The buyer will have ownership transferred to them once payment is processed post sale. Any costs relating to removal from the bond or bottling will be the responsibility of the new cask owner.

Once payment for this Lot is received from the buyer, the money will be held by Whisky-Online Ltd and only transferred to the seller once the buyer is in full legal receipt of the cask to ensure buyer's transaction is fully protected. Payment is strictly by bank transfer.

Non-UK based owners/buyers must appoint a Duty Representative to act on his/her behalf for transfer of ownership. Customs & Excise refer to the owners as the representative’s. Please be aware of this regulation before bidding. We can assist you in getting a UK representative if required.

Whisky-Online Auctions Tasting Notes:

Nose: Pronounced classic Islay from bourbon. Wafts of smoke mingling with vanillas, estery pear drops and spiced pastry.  Unctuous Pasteis de nata, cinnamon buns and pear tarts directly out of a coal fired oven. Some sharpness from lemon and lime curd. All sprinkled with a sweet smoke which dissipates with a pleasant sea breeze on a grassy beach…

Palate: Alive and vibrant, lemon on a warm coal scuttle with freshly milled black pepper and barbequed sea bass (charred crispy skin to boot). Dry spice in the form of mase and clove down the centre of the palate with warm baking spices outlying.

Finish: Long and dry. Peat smoke with the return of black pepper making way for lemon once more. 

Comments: A classic illustration of peated Bruichladdich. Spirit dominant, even in its early twenties, this 2004 vintage has the potential to further develop into a even more well composed whisky with time.

Distillery:  Bruichladdich

Distillery Status:  

Bottler: Private Bottling

Region: Islay

Distilled Year: 2004

Category: Single Malt

Country: Scotland

Founded in 1881, Bruichladdich was taken over in 1968 by Invergordon Distillers, who expanded the distillery to four stills in 1975, but allowed the otherwise unmodernised Bruichladdich to decline in the 1980s. In 1995, with Invergordon now under Whyte & Mackay’s shaky stewardship, Bruichladdich was mothballed. Thankfully the distillery was revitalised under a consortium led by Murray McDavid’s Mark Reynier, who bought Bruichladdich in 2000. 

With the effervescent Jim McEwan on board as distillery manager, Bruichladdich’s fortunes swiftly improved. Bruichladdich's whisky had traditionally been unpeated, but McEwan soon began experimenting with higher peat levels and embraced the wine finishing trend with gusto. In 2012, the revived Bruichladdich was sold to Rémy Cointreau.

Invergordon bottled unpeated Bruichladdich at various ages and strengths from the 1970s onwards, with the earlier bottlings far outshining the later ones. The Murray McDavid regime issued a blizzard of mostly wine-finished casks and introduced the heavily peated Port Charlotte and Octomore malts, which have found an avid fanbase. Independent Bruichladdich is widely available and generally high quality.

A private bottling is a cask of single malt or single grain whisky that has been bottled privately by its owner or owners, and usually bottles are not released for public sale. Private bottlings may sometimes be bottled for their owners by the distillery of origin, but are not official bottlings by that distillery. 

Alternatively, if the cask is not housed at the distillery where it was made, it may be bottled either by another distillery or private cask storage facility, or transported to a third party commercial bottler.

Private bottlings used to be relatively common, a legacy of the whisky lake of the 1980s, when distilleries had excess stock and were desperate to offload their inventory. These kinds of casks rarely make it to private bottlings nowadays - casks that were very inexpensive twenty or thirty years ago have shot up in value, and distilleries have scrambled to buy back privately-owned casks of their own spirit, while cask owners are rarely short of offers from brokers or independent bottlers.

DISCLAIMER

Although a condition report is normally included in the Lot description, we do recommend viewing/close inspection prior to placing any bids. If this is not an option and you have questions beyond the offered description and images, please use the form below "Ask A Question" to make specific enquiries or to receive a more in-depth condition report. Otherwise, Lots will be sold as seen and described.
Please note: due to the various ages of bottles, corks and their seals, condition of liquid is at the buyer's discretion. And no claim can be lodged against failure/leakage in transit.All bottles are checked by our whisky specialists Wayne & Harrison Ormerod prior to any auction. We do not auction opened bottles so therefore all items are sealed unless stated under certain circumstances where seals were never issued by the producer.
No item is deemed new, however many items are generally in good condition. When this is not the case, we aim to mention any faults in the description. The images supplied are of the actual item you will receive. If the filling level of the liquid is not visible in the images provided, we aim to indicate the current position in the description. If the filling level is impossible to determine, such as with ceramics decanters, we will provide an overall weight of the decanter in KG. Our filling level guideline can be found here.
All information in this listing is provided to the best of our knowledge including when we chose to date the age of a bottle. If you are unhappy with the listing or believe there is an error/discrepancy, you should notify us immediately and we will address the Lot accordingly. Placing a bid confirms you have checked the Lot and are satisfied.

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BID HISTORY

BID DATE TIME
Last Bids £11,200.00 19th February 2025 19:51