Springbank 14yo Bourbon Wood
Official Limited Release 2017 | 55.8% ABV
Score: 8/10
Something special.
TL;DR
Quiet, yet verging on stunning
The Risk of the Auction
Over the past five years, as my love for whisky and the thrill of its exploration have deepened, I’ve occasionally expanded my collection through the secondary market - auctions.
These places can be a goldmine for bargains and the occasional unobtainable gem. You might stumble upon an inaugural release for £30 that retailed at £85 just a year earlier. How does that happen? Maybe someone misjudged a bottle flip or received it as a doubler or unwanted gift. Who knows? The truth is, it’s all speculation - there’s no way to be sure.
It’s no secret that you can pick up Springbank 10 on auction sites for just 10–15% over RRP. Clearly, for some, it’s worth the effort to make a few pounds on a bottle.
But with new rules requiring auction platforms to report to HMRC if more than 30 bottles are sold or the gross value exceeds £1,700 annually, we might see fewer listings. Time will tell. The better auction sites helpfully show what specific bottles have fetched in previous sales. Maybe that’s to guide your expectations - or maybe it’s to make you feel like you’ve bagged a bargain if you’re bidding below the previous high. Either way, it’s part of the theatre.
Of course, there’s risk - primarily with older bottles. You never truly know where it’s been stored, or how. Sometimes you get a disintegrated cork, sometimes the liquid inside is undrinkable. It’s the gamble you simply have to accept.
Timing is everything. Most auctions wrap up on Sunday evenings, and those final minutes can be a frenzy. Set your max bid early or hover like a hawk and strike in the dying seconds.
Ultimately, buying whisky at auction isn’t simply about price - it’s definitely about scarcity and bargains, but I guess for some there is a thrill of the chase. If you’re patient, informed, and a little lucky, you might just land a bottle that turns a quiet evening into a memory worth remembering.
Review
Springbank 14yo, Bourbon Wood, 2017 Limited Release, 55.8% ABV
Typically £500 on secondary, £190 paid for this bottle
Literally the second I started to peel the foil off I could feel something was off.
The moment my fingers picked a bit of the foil, I felt it - moisture. A whisper of dampness. My heart didn’t just sink; it plummeted. But this wasn’t the time for panic. In moments like these, you hold your nerve and pray you don’t make a bad situation worse. The auction listing had been clear that there was discoloration to the labels so there was always a degree of risk in this one, it was just finding out whether the risk was going to translate into a problem or not.
I’d kept the bottle upright since it came into my possession, save for one judicious tilt to moisten the cork and ensure it hadn’t fossilised. But who knows what sins it suffered before me? Judging by the general look of things, it might well have spent a number of years lying sideways in a puddle in a forgotten pub cellar.
The first tiniest tear in the foil gave me a glimpse of the cork - and it wasn’t pretty. Not the dry, crumbling kind that flakes like pastry, but the wet, swollen, blackened kind that whispers of trouble. Disintegration was a worry, sure, but that was a fixable mess. The real fear? That the amber liquid inside had turned. That the whisky was no longer whisky, but a ghost of itself - spoiled, soured, lost.
I peeled back the rest of the foil like unwrapping bad news. The cork looked worse in full view - bloated, blotchy, black and slick with liquid. There was dampness on the neck, no doubt about it. I steadied my grip, gave it a slow twist, and hoped to hell the contents hadn’t been ruined. The cork turned easily, too easily, I took my chance to get the full thing out of there, with a swift, smooth movement. Quickly to be substituted with a new replacement cork from the box of random replacements I have taken to keeping.
There have been some great Springbank Reviews on Dramface over the last few weeks, so I thought it was time to jump in with this one - a 14-year-old Bourbon Wood distilled back in 2002 and bottled in 2017. The good news; the liquid didn’t seem to have been adversely affected by our cork issue.
Thank funk for that.
Score: 8/10
Something special.
TL;DR
Quiet, yet verging on stunning
Nose
The nose has a truck load of vanilla and some saltiness. There is a lot of fruit on the nose as well, apples and sweet nectarines and a waft of oaky wood.
Palate
This is great stuff. It’s pretty complex with a creamy texture that seems a bit oily. There is a lot of fruit, which is perhaps more prevalent with no sherry cask drowning it out. There is some citrus, primarily grapefruit with a bit of orange but with the added sweetness of peach combined with some cinnamon spice and honey.
The saline note from the nose doesn’t quite carry into the palate - it fades before it lands. As for peat, I didn’t catch any, but that’s par for the course with Springbank; it’s rarely assertive enough to register for me.
The finish on it is long but fruity and subtle with the complexity lingering stunningly through to the end.
The Dregs
Back in 2017, this bottle hit shelves at a modest £55 - a steal in hindsight. Fast forward to today, and if J&A Mitchell dropped it again, it’d still be a fair price - from them - but also likely a case of good luck finding one. You’d need the reflexes of a goalie in a penalty shoot-out and the luck of a lottery winner.
Secondary market? That would be stratospheric. The new Springbank 5-year-old cask strengths - meant to be “plentiful” - are already punching past £110, and that’s before the dust has settled.
As for the liquid? Solid. Respectable; definitely approaching stunning even. I have been neck-deep in peated bourbon casks lately and this didn’t quite elbow its way to the top of the pile, but it did rise elegantly to the top. It’s good, no doubt, a step above good - I am hoping as the bottle goes down further it puts further daylight between it and other bourbon casks.
The Springbank DNA is loud and proud on this. You could blindfold me, spin me twice, and drop me in a darkened tasting - I’d be confident I could still call it out as a Springbank. That funky, oily, coastal swagger is unmistakable. It’s got the Campbeltown soul, definitely. But, as I hunt through today’s secondary auction sites, there’s no way I would pay £500 for it.
As an aside, the latest edition of The Dramface Top 40 Distilleries will go live tomorrow at 6:00am. I for one will be eagerly looking to see if Springbank has managed to keep its top spot. If so, which pretenders are inching closer?
Score: 8/10
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