New proposal from Murray McDavid

Independent bottler, company Murray McDavid, has been famous for years for its large-scale experiments with additional whiskey maturation, known as wood finishing. In the company, the thing is called the art of maturation, The Art of Maturation, and it results in dozens of Wihsky editions matured additionally in sherry barrels, port, various types of wines, as well as rum or Armagnac. Murray McDavid even undertook a procedure that reverses the usual finish maturation, namely, whisky initially aged in a sherry barrel was subjected to final maturation in a first-fill bourbon barrel.

The procedure goes back to the time when Murray McDavid bought the then-defunct Bruichladdich distillery, located on the Isle of Islay, and Jim McEwan, who resigned from further work at Bowmore for this purpose, joined the team. The thing took place more than two decades ago, and resulted in a huge number of "finished" whiskies from under the Murray McDavid banner, which hit the market in subsequent years.

The Murray McDavid brand was bought in 2013 by brokerage firm Aceo, but its business profile remained unchanged. Subsequent editions have given us whiskeys finished in the fanciest types of casks.

These days, the Murray McDavid brand has unveiled a new whisky series that is slightly different from its previous ones. The layout has changed somewhat, but the approach to preparing bottled whisky has also changed. To date, the Murray McDavid label has primarily bottled single barrels, possibly, occasionally the contents of two or three barrels. The result was extremely short runs, often limited to 200-300 bottles. This time it was decided to use more barrels and increase the edition to twelve thousand bottles.

As part of the new Cask Craft edition, 6 new whiskies were bottled, all bottled at 44.5% vol., without an age declaration, which is also new for proposals from under the Murray McDavid banner. The new whiskeys are:

Croftengea Marsala Finish (barrique cask)
Mannochmore Port Finish (barrique cask)
Linkwood Madeira Finish (barrique cask)
Dailuaine Bourbon Finish (quarter cask)
Strathdearn Sherry Finish (hogshead cask)
Glen Elgin Peated Finish (hogshead cask)

All whiskies in the new series are offered at a unified price of £34 per bottle.

Croftengea is one of the whisky brands produced at the Loch Lomond distillery, added to the distillery's portfolio in 2004. This is the peatiest whisky edition from the distillery. Strathdearn, on the other hand, is a single malt whisky from the Tomatin distillery. This is the brand adopted by the distillery for distillates to be sold outside.

The House of Whisky Online offers a whole range of old editions of whiskeys bottled by Murray McDavid, including from the company's initial phase of operations prior to its acquisition by Aceo Ltd.

[16.11.2022 / Photo: Murray McDavid]