Dr. Scotchtagon Presents: Springbank 18-Year-Old

by Dr. Octagon, J.D.

I’m warming up with some Scotch because nothing makes me grouchier than trying to blog a Facebook UFC prelim while it is playing on my computer screen. But I can’t really complain, since it still comes in at much higher fidelity than a fight on FuelTV.

I’ve been getting a lot of requests for reviews of less smoky scotches. You guys are a bunch of wusses, but I just happened to receive a really nice bottle from our esteemed editor as compensation for my unpaid labor. So as a special treat, tonight I am going to be reviewing an 18-year-old from Springbank, which is a distillery in Campbeltown, Scotland. Campbeltown is the smallest whisky region, having only three distilleries, those being Springbank, Glengyle and Glen Scotia. If there’s one that I missed please let me know in the bustling comments section below.

Springbank the distillery is doing all it can to increase the number of whiskies coming out of Campbeltown, and they are punching above their weight with three different brands: Springbank, Longrow and Hazelburn. Springbank is the most well-regarded and is medium-peated, but Longrow is popular among lovers of peat smoke. I don’t know much about Hazelburn other than that it is unpeated, relatively new, and named after another defunct distillery (Campbeltown used to have over 30 of them). [[MORE]]

So this bottle that my munificent editor has gifted me is somewhat of a collector’s item. The information available on the internet about it is sparse, but it has a blue label, appears to be a 2009 bottling, and is notoriously difficult to get one’s hands on (Editor’s note: I actually have pretty good connections in the booze world. Go figure). The new label is black and purple and recently won Whisky Magazine’s title for best Campbeltown malt, though as discussed above, there aren’t a ton of distilleries in the region.

Springbank distillery was founded in 1828 and was one of Campbeltown’s formerly numerous distilleries to survive to the present era. If you like to drink something that is of a place, there is no more locally-sourced whisky in Scotland than Campbeltown. They malt their own barley (floor malting, more expensive and time-consuming), they use local peat, age the whisky onsite, and also bottle it onsite.

With regard to floor malting, this means that after they soak the barley they just spread it out on to the floor of a building and periodically aerate it. It looks positively unsanitary, but you have to remember that whenever you make something into alcohol, it will kill all the microbes. The same reason it is okay to step on grapes before making them into wine: the sanitary magic of alcohol. Floor malting is how all the distilleries used to do it, but it’s far more expensive and labor-intensive than the modern method, drum malting.

Drum malting is just like it sounds. Rather than putting the barley on the floor, they put it in a giant temperature-controlled drum. This is generally done by third parties according to specifications provided by each distillery.

So which method is better? Most distilleries use commercial third party malting, but the five that still use floor malting are all pretty excellent: Laphroaig, Highland Park, Balvenie, Bowmore and Springbank. Springbank is the only one of these, as far as I know, that uses no commercial malting whatsoever. Who knows if the floor malting itself makes the whisky better, or if it is just because those who use floor malting are just more likely to be very hands-on with every aspect of the whisky-making process.  I would lean toward the latter, but when you’re spending a bunch of money on a bottle, it helps to have a little explanation of where your money is going.

The other thing to know about is that Springbank is what they call 2.5 times distilled. They have two batches of new make, one that is two times distilled and another that is three times distilled, then they mix them together. Because three times would be too many and two not enough, I suppose. 80 percent of the casks used to age this whisky are sherry.

This is a pretty complex dram. Right out of the bottle, it smells of sweet cereal with some citrus to it. On the palate, it is somewhat sharp, and really coats the mouth. A touch of water mellows the scotch and really opens it up. There is some liquorice, smoke, and coconut flavor to it, along with dried fruit. Excellent. It will be a struggle not to kill the bottle before the title fight.

 I’ll give it a 155 out of 156.5