Thompson Bros Dufftown 16yo
Oloroso hogshead single cask | 51.5% ABV
Score: 8/10
Something special.
TL;DR
Good sherry bombs are for life, not just for Christmas
Summer.
We’re here, at least us folks in the northern hemisphere. The birds are singing, the sun is setting later each passing day and I start going to work in a T-shirt. I even found a pair of shorts, which got very limited use last year.
When it’s that time of the year many of us whisky people tend to change our habits of consumption. Some drink a bit less, some drink a bit more: cold beers, barbecues and weddings anyone? A vast majority, including yours truly, shift to paler, distillate-driven whiskies, as opposed to cask-influenced sherry and wine bombs.
This shift can be subtle or drastic, depending on the person of course. I’ve got a few pals who pretty much only like heavily-peated whisky, and they will sip a neat, Bordeaux-cask matured Octomore in 40°C heat in the middle of August. For the Americans reading this, 40°C = Death valley in May at noon. Or something like that. They’re stubborn, I suppose.
As confessed, this is also true of myself. If you’ve read my reviews diligently though, you know I tend to favour those fresher, paler whiskies all year round, so the shift isn’t all that dramatic. I’ve noticed over the past two years that I was buying more bourbon cask focused whiskies, with only a few being peated, and I occasionally dabbled in sherry territory, but mostly stayed clear of the ‘funny cask’ business. I believe one of the reasons for that is my background in wine.
When I first got into whisky, as is the case with a lot of us, it was all about the big flavour hooks: peat first, of course, then sherry casks. At the time, I was all about trying to discover every possible taste profile in whisky - and nothing was off the table. Then, as I started to work in wine and learnt about it, it started to influence my preferences in whisky. I learnt how to develop my senses of smell and taste, allowing me to be more critical of what I was drinking. I also fell in love with terroir-driven wines. Oooh, the T-word.
My taste in wines can be described as such: I think the winemaker should be an intermediary between the terroir and the finished wine. To me, a talented winemaker is one who makes the wine their terroir dictates, not the wine they would like to make.
For example, a winemaker located in Chablis, in Northern Bourgogne, has a very limestone-y terroir on which Chardonnay grapes are planted. The climate there is quite cold and humid, so a good Chablis should be a dry, vibrant white wine, with lots of acidity and salinity, and should be aged on the lees only to a certain extent, just enough to offset this acidity.
A bad Chablis would be something made from ultra ripened grapes, aged only in charred new oak, that would have lots of body and only smell of vanilla. This might be a pleasant wine, but it’ll be a bad Chablis. I will stop here with the wine analogy, as I already covered everything a whisky drinker should know about wine in a very lengthy feature previously. No editors were harmed in the process.
I started viewing whisky through the same lens. I’m of the opinion that one should always find some trace of the distillate character in a whisky. I have nothing against the use of impactful casks, if the spirit can hold up to them. I also do not loathe big sherry bombs, but they make for a very small portion of my collection. To put it simply, I won’t refuse a dram of Glenallachie 10, but I probably won’t be in any rush to go and buy a bottle.
Don’t tell this to Mrs Fife because she’ll kill me, but one of my goals is, in a few years time, to own a bottled example of every distillery in Scotland, and preferably an indie teenager from a refill bourbon cask. This way I’ll have a “distillery character library”, and I’ll be able to satiate my borderline autistic needs for whisky geekery.
Just like the winemaker opinion above , I know this only works if whisky makers are true to their distillery’s character, but what a library that would be eh?
And that brings me to today’s whisky…
Review
Dufftown 16yo, Thompson Brothers, 2008, Oloroso Sherry Hogshead, 218 bottles, sold out, 51.5% ABV
£75 paid
After what I’ve just told you, you’d be forgiven for asking why the hell I bought this bottle which, at first glance, looks like pure oloroso juice. Well, while it feels a bit like doing my own psychoanalysis, I think there are a few reasons.
Firstly, I stumbled upon this when visiting Glasgow, and I was on the hunt for anything that had the Thompson Bros signature on it, as these can be hard to find and much pricier in France.
Secondly, it was winter back then, and I remember telling myself to grab a good sherry-matured bottling, because I didn’t really have anything that tickled my fancy on the shelf at the time. There was also the fact that this was sold at what I think is a very reasonable £75 for a natural 16yo, bottled at high strength.
Lastly, and probably most importantly, how often do you find Dufftown from indies? I think it was the first time I spotted this distillery on a bottle that didn’t have ‘The Singleton’ written in bold letters on the label. Dufftown indeed belongs to Diageo and its output is mainly destined to feed the European market with the Singleton brand, a quite successful ‘Top 5’ mass market single malt.
I have a certain fascination for distilleries that are as obviously under the radar as this one. Just to give you an idea, I brought this bottle along to a recent whisky club meet. When everyone failed to identify it blind, I told them it was a distillery located in Dufftown. My mates then managed to shout out the name of every Dufftown-based distillery, including the shuttered Pittyvaich, before landing on Dufftown distillery. It is also, interestingly, in over three years and over 1,200 reviews, Dramface’s first Dufftown.
So, I decided to grab it, telling myself I would like it because I remembered Dufftown whisky is supposed to be quite full bodied, thus capable of resisting the clearly very active sherry cask. My copy of the Malt Whisky Yearbook states that Dufftown is capable of producing six million litres per annum, making it quite a big monster. Diageo classifies its make as falling into the ‘green-grassy’ camp, and it achieves a good body due to long fermentation and quite a wide spirit cut, between 73% and 58% alcohol, letting plenty of richer and oilier molecules come through in the distillation. All of this should make for a single malt capable of handling first-fill oloroso maturation.
The last bit of auto-convincing came in the form of my own Thompson Brothers theorem: If it sounds weird, or not your cup of tea, but it’s from the Thompson Brothers, it is probably still very good and worthy of being tried.
In my experience so far, this theorem works.
Score: 8/10
Very Good Indeed.
TL;DR
Good sherry bombs are for life, not just for Christmas
Nose
What is immediately evident is that this sherry cask was of very high quality. Walnut and coffee liqueur, dates. Candied ginger bites. Quite rich and bold. Grand Marnier. Some chocolate as well as dried banana. Maraschino cherries.
With water: Banana bread now rather than dried banana flakes. Mars bar. More of those Maraschino cherries.
Palate
Rich, sweet and thick. Beautiful balance of sherry sweetness upfront (Maraschino cherries, fig jam) and spices on the finish (ginger and hot chili jam). Quite long and warming, somewhat sweet but very moreish. The flavours are mostly cask-derived, but the texture and thickness ensures the distillate remains detectable. A really nice cask-spirit combination.
With water: The sweetness is slightly amped up. Ripe cherries, caramel, peanut butter.
The Dregs
So much for summer whisky and bourbon casks right? Sometimes a nicely done sherried dram just hits the spot. Even though the weather has warmed up a little (I know; don’t jinx it, Ainsley), I find it hard to go past this bottle. It is so damn delicious. I also think it sits at the perfect ABV. I don’t know if it is cask strength, as I think it might be a little low for 16 years, but if there has been dilution at play here, it’s been masterfully done.
This got me thinking about the seasonality of drinks. The most striking example I have is rosé wine. In my market, I start to sell rosé as soon as the sun appears in April up until the first September rains, when suddenly nobody wants to buy it anymore. I think this has a lot to do with the Provence wine producers aggressively marketing rosé as a summer, poolside wine, but it doesn’t really make sense. If people love drinking rosé in the summer, they’d still love it in the winter. And if they don't, on account it is just a refreshing kind of wine, then why do they still buy whites and champagne all year long?
I think this idea that summer whisky has to be a fresh, crisp, bourbon cask malt is based in truth, but maybe not to the extent we think. If I’m honest, though, should I find myself in the scorching summer heat but I’m offered either a 9yo Tullibardine from a refill hoggie or a 25yo Glengoyne fully matured in sherry, well - I’ll be holding a dram of Glengoyne with sweaty hands.
This summer season, as I’m sure you will, drink whatever the hell you like.
As for what I’d recommend listening to today : Come Into My Life by Robert Plant. No particular reason, I just really like this song, in all weather, any time of the year.
Score: 8/10
Tried this? Share your thoughts in the comments below. AF
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