LOT ID: 0723-960
End Date : Sep 13 2023 08:00 PM
Springbank 1992 - 2023. 30 Year Old. Private Bottling. Cask number 267. One of 118 bottles matured in a Bourbon Cask. 70cl. 46.4%. No box.
A privately bottled single cask of Springbank from the 1992 vintage, bottled as a 30-year-old in 2023 with the label paying tribute to King Charles’ Coronation Year. Cask 267 of Springbank’s 1992 vintage was an ex-bourbon hogshead that yielded a total of 118 bottles at a great drinking strength of 46.4%.
This cask has been sitting at Springbank’s warehouse in Campbeltown since being purchased by the owner as a newly-filled cask in 1992. As referenced elsewhere on the label, 1992 was also the year that Springbank revived their in-house malting process, making Springbank the first truly self-sufficient distillery - where every stage of the whisky-making process is carried out by hand on-site at the distillery itself.
FILLING LEVEL
Into Neck
Springbank is one of the giants of the Scotch whisky world, an independently-owned distillery dedicated to preserving the traditional methods of distillation. For a long time Springbank was flying the flag for Campbeltown whisky almost alone but the distillery’s fortunes have improved since the 1990s, and in 2000 Springbank expanded their operations with the purchase and subsequent reconstruction of the Glengyle distillery, home of Kilkerran.
The Springbank distillery produces three distinct single malt whiskies, with the regular lightly-peated Springbank malt complemented by the heavily-peated Longrow and the unpeated, triple-distilled Hazelburn. Of these secondary malts, Longrow has a longer history and more passionate fanbase, with the 1973/74 vintages in particular attracting eye-catching prices at auction. The standard Springbank spirit remains one of Scotland’s greatest whiskies, and auction prices for old bottles continue to rise.
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.
BID | DATE | TIME | |
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£900.00 | 13th September 2023 | 14:50 | |