Foursquare 16 Year Old - Exceptional Cask Selection - Shibboleth - 2021 Release

Foursquare is an award-winning rum distillery in Barbados owned by R. L. Seale Co., a family firm founded in the 1920s and run today by Sir David Seale and his son Richard. After a successful period as rum traders and blenders, the Seales bought an abandoned sugar factory and converted it into the Foursquare distillery in 1995/6, equipping it with a modern three-column continuous still and a traditional pot still fitted with coolers and retorts for extra reflux.

Richard Seale has earned a reputation as a progressive, maverick distiller, embracing technology like vacuum distillation while being famously outspoken against the use of sweeteners and flavourings - apart from their spiced rums, all Foursquare’s rums are all released without flavourings or added sugar / molasses, although some of them do use spirit caramel for colour adjustment. Foursquare usually blend their column and pot still spirits together both before and after maturation.

Distillery bottlings are, as the name suggests, bottled by or for the distillery from which the whisky has originated and are thus often referred to as Official Bottlings or OBs. Distillery bottlings are generally more desirable for collectors and usually fetch higher prices at auction than independent bottlings. They are officially-endorsed versions of the whisky from a particular distillery and are therefore considered the truest expression of the distillery’s character.

This ideal of the distillery character is regarded so seriously by the distilleries and brand owners that casks of whisky that are considered to vary too far from the archetype are frequently sold on to whisky brokers and independent bottlers. When this happens, it is often with the proviso that the distillery’s name is not allowed to be used when the cask is bottled for fear of diminishing or damaging the distillery’s character and status.