Springbank Hand-fill
Demijohn bottling from 2023 | 57.9% ABV
Score: 7/10
Very Good Indeed.
TL;DR
Two fingers raised to an automated world
The Antithesis to AI
I was reading through Broddy’s review of Cadenhead's Seven Stars and the data analytics he included, when I was wondering if I’d be included in the author specific analysis, I noted that the cut off was 50 reviews.
Fair enough, I thought to myself, I haven’t exactly been prolific in my output, so it’s no surprise that I haven’t hit the 50 mark yet.
I did, however, look at how many reviews I've had published, and it dawned on me that I have broken the 30 mark already, so I decided it’s time for a bit of introspection, again.
English is my second language. According to my mom, while I’ve always been able to speak a bit of English, it wasn’t until around eight or nine years old that I was able to form complete sentences. For the whole of my childhood and early teenage years, English as a school subject had always been a nightmare. I hated writing as well, especially back in the days when computers weren’t commonplace, holding up a pen or pencil to write was something I dreaded, and I would have picked a three hour maths exam over writing a 500 word essay all day, especially if it was in English.
Up until pre-matriculation, my written English was still pretty poor, but when picking subjects for the final two years of my high school education, being bilingual was mandatory. I had to do two languages, and I only knew two languages, Chinese and English, which means there was a lot of work to be done.
I began consuming a lot of English in text form. I set my home page on my internet browser to soccernet, a website for football news, which was later acquired by ESPN. Soccernet would be my first gateway to reading English on a more regular basis. I learned how to write in a more structured manner, how to write more concisely and how to write descriptively. Simply by reading English regularly, it was my first step in learning by osmosis, and quite quickly I branched off to other outlets for reading football like The Guardian, DailyMail, BBC, etc - all of which provided different styles of writing. As I went onto these other outlets, I started consuming other news from them. While BBC taught me a more formal journalistic style of writing, the Daily Mail showed me how to weave in humour and, as I continued to read, my writing also improved considerably, at least enough for me to pass my exams.
The journey continued in university, but in a different way. Since the general level of English at my high school was better than the average school in Hong Kong, my English went from relatively mediocre to relatively good, and suddenly I had a reputation of someone who is a decent writer. As such, I took a lot more writing responsibilities in group assignments, which led to more training still.
As I entered the workforce, in a city where most folk don’t use English naturally, my ability to write fluently in English by now had become part of my professional identity. “Murdo, can you help me rephrase this?”, “Murdo, can you draft a quick email for me?”, “Murdo, can you proofread this for me?” These requests have become very common, and again, more practice for me.
When I started writing for Dramface, I didn’t fully comprehend what a privilege it is, until I was made aware by one of the writers of the high standards that the editors held during writers’ recruitment. Of course, in hindsight, that shouldn’t be surprising at all. Dramface is not a run-of-the-mill blog you find on the internet, it strives for high standards in all aspects, the website is sleek, the editors and sub-editors are top notch, integrity is non-negotiable. We even have a diligent and permanently-manned social media presence, and we try to cover twenty articles every month. It only makes sense that the writing is also held to a high standard, especially when there’s considerable investment required in recruiting and signing up new authors. The fact that I now feel like I belong here is simply unbelievable, especially considering the journey that it took for my English to get to this barely acceptable standard. I’m sure the same goes for some of my other fellow writers’ whose English isn’t their first or even second language, and it’s a testament to the hard work that we’ve put in over the years to get to a level of competency.
Recent developments in AI means that a lot of writing work previously outsourced to me has been shifted to the likes of ChatGPT, Copilot or various other Large Language Models. For now, their output still requires extensive checking to prevent AI hallucination creeping into documents. For larger documents, it’s still more efficient to have a human write them than to check AI written versions extensively for factual inaccuracies, but it seems to me that it’s only a matter of time when they can take over all writing.
Writing for Dramface, however, remains old fashioned. Individual writers still manually type every letter, every word, and write every paragraph to submit every review. Some, myself included, choose to use AI as a tool to check grammar or spelling mistakes, or occasionally even have clunky sentences revised for easier reading, but I always make sure the final draft is all of my work. AI revised versions are always re-revised by myself to make sure the tone, choice of words and - most importantly - opinions remain mine and mine only. Even if one day the technical advancement of machine learning means an LLM can perfectly replicate my style, I would still choose to do it the old fashioned way, to keep all the flaws and imperfections in my writing.
Being driven in a car is not the same as driving one, even if the destination is the same, and at Dramface, I wish to keep my hands on the wheel while I take you, our readers, along on my wonderful journey of whisky exploration.
Speaking of AI helping business, distilleries have not opted out. Mackmyra had previously given it a go with this release, and curiosity would have me get one if the price had been reasonable and available in my market, neither of which was the case, so it remains a point of curiosity. I’m not sure how much AI’s input was involved, how flavours and aromas were being turned into ones and zeros. While scoring on Whiskybase (or anywhere) is inherently flawed, a score of 83 seems to be the kind of score that a “design by committee” model would achieve, i.e. no faults, but no surprises either. Again I must stress, I haven’t tasted that whisky and I’m not here to pass comment on it.
If there was one distillery that I would bet my life on that does not use AI, it would be Springbank; the distillery that’s almost allergic to computers or anything automated. Measurements done by attentive eyes, levers cranked by skilled hands, everything imaginable, where possible, is done by people; no wonder they employ so many men and women to produce so little whisky. The result? The best whisky in the world, at least according to you.
Is it a positive thing that they lean so heavily on people and not computers? I don’t know. Trained as an engineer, I am tempted to think that its labour-intensive workflow is not the only thing contributing to good whisky, but if they insist on creating and bottling works of art, we will keep looking out for them, the fact that so many real people come together to create the art adds to that romanticism.
Review
Springbank, Distillery demijohn ‘hand-fill’, filled May 2023, 57.9% ABV
£55 and always available at the distillery
In the corner of the Springbank distillery shop, there are four demijohns, labelled Springbank, Longrow, Hazelburn, and Kilkerran. Each contains its respective whisky; they are the equivalent of hand-fills of other distilleries, except being sold at very affordable prices. What are the specifications of the whiskies in each demijohn? Nobody knows.
As each container is drained, new whisky is added to ensure that the demijohns are never emptied, resulting in a sort of infinity blend, while still remaining a single malt. The bottle of today’s review was filled from the Springbank labelled demijohn in 2023.
If automation provides maximum control, this bottle is the antithesis to that. The distillery can control what goes into these demijohns, but after a while, what actually remains becomes very blurry over time. I’m not sure when this concept started, but I’m quite sure that it’s gone through enough cycles that nobody is able to keep track of exactly what’s in them anymore. Chaos at its finest.
The colour of this whisky is light, but it doesn’t mean that it’s all ex-bourbon casks, Springbank frequently uses sauternes and rum casks, which can also be quite pale, so let’s see if we can detect those as well.
Score: 7/10
Very Good Indeed.
TL;DR
Two fingers raised to an automated world
Nose
Fresh and sharp nose, metallic, hints of salinity, hints of peppermint, zesty orange, confectionery orange, fresh oranges, very big on the fresh oranges actually.
Palate
The fresh oranges are still front and center sprinkled with salt, a touch of tingling jalapeño, creamy milk chocolate, candy floss, the finish is nice and long, very oily, with a hint of salt for seasoning. If I had tasted this blind, I’d be thinking it was an Oban, not sure if it comes across in my notes, but the salty oranges really gave me those vibes.
The Dregs
Springbank does produce the occasional dud, but those are few and far between, and the demijohns signify how confident they are in their whiskies. Whatever the ages, whatever the casks, however you put them together, they are happy to slap their name on the bottle and charge you money for it.
As for the casks I mentioned earlier, it’s not as clean as the Springbank cage bottle I had reviewed previously. Being bottled from effectively an infinity demijohn, remnants from casks of all sorts must be present, what’s important is what casks were dominant, and in my opinion this particular bottle is still ex-bourbon, cask-led whisky.
Back to the AI thing… Sometimes it worries me that the younger generation now have a shortcut, instead of putting in the hard work to improve their reading and writing, they have a very powerful tool to do the job for them. Will this breed a generation who lose the ability to learn? The hopeful side of me likes to think that technological advancement is not something new; it is what built civilisation. Humans have shown our ability to effectively outsource manual labour to technology, after all, it’s not that long ago when sending and receiving fax was considered a basic skill. Let’s not underestimate the younger generation’s ability to adapt to this brave new world and build amazing things with the shiny tools at their disposal, while still being able to enjoy and understand old-school examples that exist for different reasons entirely.
Score: 7/10
Tried this? Share your thoughts in the comments below. MMc
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