Online whisky platformCaskshare has teamed up with Isle of Raasay Distillery to offered a selection of 30L casks for reservation by the bottle.
They believe this is an ideal opportunity for whisky fans to get their hands on, the innovative product is not often seen in mainstream distillery production.
These casks represent the first output taking Caskshare customers through the whole journey from new filled casks through to maturation and bottling. The first of these casks are bottling now and shipping to the Caskshare customers who reserved early on in the cask’s life.
Exactly three years ago Isle of Raasay Distillery began filling custom built ex-Speyside Scotch whisky oak casks. This was the brainchild of co-founder Alasdair Day, who is a firm believer in bringing innovation and novel approaches to the whisky sector.
The 30 Litre Project deals with casks that have a much higher spirit-to-wood surface contact ratio means a much faster maturation process, cutting through the needs for longer maturation and making the craft producer able to release a well-developed spirit in a shorter time frame.
Distilleries in hotter climates have already opened up the market to shorter (three year) maturations, but the colder Scottish climates have traditionally not been favourable to this style of whisky in the larger cask sizes.
Alasdair worked with Speyside Cooperage to make bespoke small casks specially designed for this style of whisky. Each cask is completely unique and are made from the wood previously used to mature Speyside whisky in larger quantities.
Alasdair said: ‘It’s a well-known fact that the size of a cask has a direct impact on the maturation of the spirit within it.
‘When my great-grandfather created his blended Scotch whisky, the age of the single malt was a major component in the quality of the blend.
‘Now on Raasay we have the option to fill smaller specially coopered ex Speyside oak casks that impart their specific flavour in different ways and in much shorter timescales. Single malt evolves with much more flavour development yet to come.’
David Nicol, founder of Caskshare, added: ‘The idea of using bespoke built casks is a great example of the innovation coming from Alasdair Day and the whole team at the Isle of Raasay Distillery.
‘Scotch is an ever-evolving product and when we heard about these casks we were committed to bringing a selection of them to Caskshare.com for whisky fans to reserve by the bottle. We decided to bottle one at 46% for a wider audience, and the other at cask strength for a comparison at smaller quantities.’
An additional range of 30L casks are set to launch on Caskshare imminently, initially available exclusively to The Caskshare Collective, Caskshare’s membership program offering permanent discounts, early access to a selection of newly launched casks and bi-annual tasting packs of maturing or recently bottles exclusive single cask whisky.
Find out more at www.caskshare.com
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