Holyrood Single Cask
The first malt whisky distillery in the Scottish capital in roughly a century, Holyrood Distillery recently made its market debut with the release of its Holyrood Arrival Single Malt Whisky in the fall of 2023. Sales of the distillery's first-ever single cask edition were launched today.
Holyrood Single Cask Series - Cask #147 is the first edition in the distillery's announced series of whiskies from single casks to be released this year. As assured by the manufacturer, in each case, lovers of Scotch malt whisky will receive full information on the contents of the bottle. And so, cask number 147 is a bourbon cask, it was filled with a distillate made from a complex malt charge. Three specialized types of malt made up this roux - Crystal, Vienna and Caramalt, and two yeast strains were used during fermentation, including Lavigne wine yeast.
The whisky went into the bottles in its natural form - no cold filtration, no colored caramel and no dilution. The strength of the liquor with which it left the barrel is 59.4 vol. A single bottle was priced at £95, and this whisky was sold through the distillery's online store.
The debut edition of Holyrood single malt whisky has received an extremely positive reception. They praised the maturity and complexity of the liquor, despite its young age. The whisky sold out fairly quickly, in about a week, and reviews appearing here and there praised the young distillery's product. Perhaps this also led to considerable hopes for the release of the first single cask. Suffice it to say that the sale began in the early morning hours of January 12, 2024 and ended within hours. When the first words of this material were coming out from under the keyboard, 23 bottles were still on sale. About the time I was writing the third paragraph, it came out that the whiskey was sold out. This is a really decent result for the product of a young and still little-known distillery.
According to Calum Rae, Holyrood distillery manager, the new whisky's bouquet offers notes of light grapes, pears, a hint of pepper and fresh menthol. In the taste you will find plenty of juicy fruit wrapped in a layer of sweet coffee with milk.
Holyrood Distillery was launched in 2019. Its location in the center of Edinburgh, as well as the fact that a Visitor Center was launched on the site, made the distillery instantly one of the tourist attractions of the Scottish capital. However, this was not what determined its success as a whisky maker. A strategic move by the distillery's owners and management was to move away from the practice of creating a "new distillery style," focusing on a single, established character of the whisky produced here. Instead, it was decided to experiment extensively with both the barley varieties used, the types of malt in the backfill and the yeast strains. With scientific support from scientific authorities in the brewing and distilling industry from a nearby university, the distillery tested 23 different yeast strains and their performance with 99 backfill recipes in 2022 alone.
Evidently, a lot of good things are happening at the St. Leonards Lane, in the shadow of Salisbury Crags hill, a dozen minutes' walk from the royal palace of Holyrood and the famous Royal Mile tract. It's worth keeping an eye on them, especially since, in addition to their youthful enthusiasm and university support, one of Scotland's veteran distillers, former Macallan master distiller David Robertson, is also involved in the distillery's operation. Very clearly, at Holyrood Distillery they know what they are doing.
[12.01.2024 / photo: Holyrood Distillery]