Dalrymple (Ailsa Bay) 11 Year Old 2012 First Fill Oloroso Sherry Butt, Little Brown Dog

A fascinating sherry-forward expression from Dalrymple, more commonly known as Ailsa Bay, the Lowland whisky distillery owned by William Grant & Sons. 

This is classified as a 'Blended Malt Whisky' as this single cask was apparently 'teaspooned', hence the team at LBD are unable to call it a Single Malt. 

“Teaspooning” is the practice of adding a small amount of whisky from a distillery (hence the name referring to a teaspoon) to a single cask with whisky from another distillery, technically resulting in Blended Whisky, as per SWA regulations, even though it is almost entirely Single Malt Whisky from one distillery for all practical purposes. Simply put, while this is 99.99% a single malt, it will need to be called a Blended Malt due to the 0.01% other whisky teaspooned into it!

The act of teaspooning further means the cask can no longer be sold or bottled as a single malt under the distillery name by blenders, bonders and independent bottlers. This is a fairly common practice in the Scotch Whisky industry where distilleries use a different 'trade' name for their teaspooned casks. Ailsa Bay uses the name Dalrymple for their teaspooned whisky.

They're also not allowed to say teaspooned on the label but LBD have instead cleverly included a few not so subtle hints in the design. They've added in a granite teaspoon to indicate this isn't really a blend, with the granite representing Ailsa Craig, a small isle that's located across from Ailsa Bay distillery, which is the source of all the granite for the world's curling stones. For added measure, they also made a launch video that makes a mockery of the practice of "teaspooning" casks, which you can watch here.

This “teaspooned” Blended Malt was distilled in 2012 at the Ailsa Bay distillery, and fully matured in a 1st fill Oloroso Sherry Butt, before bottling in the summer of 2023.

It is a delightful sherry bomb of a whisky, non-chill filtered with no added colour, and bottled at a cask strength of 56.8%. Only 700 bottles were produced from the single sherry butt and these are now the last remaining bottles of a dram certainly not worth missing out on!

Colour: Pepsi

Nose: Obvious sherry bomb so difficult to be unique with tasing notes here! Raisins, dark chocolate, cognac

Palate: Soreen malt loaf, tinned prunes, fresh figs

Finish: Cinnamon rolls.