LOT ID: 0624-556
End Date : Aug 07 2024 08:00 PM
Royal Brackla 1979 - 1997. 18 Year Old. Bottled by The Scotch Malt Whisky Society. Society cask number 55.8. A Shot Fired Among Conifers. One of 323 bottles. 70cl. 62.6%. 109.5 Proof. No box.
From the archives. "A shot fired among conifers. This was the first distillery to be granted a Royal Warrant (by William IV), and is found on the Cawdor Estate near Nairn. It is only bottled by its proprietor in small quantities. In Crow, Ted Hughes writes about "The after-rale of a shot fired among conifers in rainy twilight" This captures it. The first nose is vaguely of gun-smoke (with some liquorice), and with water this becomes the steely smell of shot-gun barrels. The flavour is sweet overall but with attractive acidity and good balance of primary tastes. Unusual and interesting. Go easy on the water." The original price for this bottle in 1997 was £47.
FILLING LEVEL
Lower Neck
Royal Brackla is a large but still relatively obscure old Highland distillery and has been owned by Bacardi since 1998 when the latter bought the Dewar’s group from Diageo. Brackla had been somewhat lost in Diageo’s portfolio, but under Bacardi, the distillery was revitalized and a new range of official bottlings finally appeared in 2015. The distillery’s Royal Warrant was bestowed by King William IV in 1835, the first to be awarded to a Scotch whisky distillery.
Independent bottlings of Royal Brackla are more common nowadays than they used to be, but are generally relatively young casks, although more respectably aged releases have appeared from Gordon & MacPhail and the SMWS. The distillery itself also now bottles occasional long-aged limited editions as the Exceptional Casks series.
The Scotch Malt Whisky Society (SMWS) began in late 1970s Edinburgh when founder Pip Hills persuaded a group of friends to chip in for a cask of Glenfarclas, and was officially formalised in 1983. Today the SMWS has two venues in Edinburgh, a London bar and a string of international partnerships serving its 35,000 members.
The Society’s whiskies are known for their unique SMWS coding system. Each cask bottled is assigned two numbers, representing the distillery and the bottling number, so 1.45 is the forty-fifth cask bottled from the first distillery and 33.27 is the 27th cask from the 33rd distillery.
Glenmorangie bought the Society in 2004, but sold it in 2015 to a private consortium who floated the SMWS on the stock market in 2021 via their holding company Artisanal Spirits Co.
| BID | DATE | TIME | |
|---|---|---|---|
| £250.00 | 7th August 2024 | 18:09 | |
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