Wolfburn No.270
Small Batch 2018 Release | 46% ABV
Score: 4/10
Some promise.
TL;DR
Pleasant on the nose, overworked on the palate
Storage Wars
My daughter is now barrelling towards the 18-month mark at a speed I am not emotionally prepared for. She’s walking, she’s talking – and through us, her parents, she is steadily filling our home to the rafters with toddler-sized furniture.
There was a brief respite. That short period when you manage to move the baby furniture out. Suddenly, you have space again. You regain rooms of your home once lost to seats, swings and play areas all designed to contain, within a designated safe area, the anthropomorphised potato you have brought into this world: fragile but loud, and somehow always sticky.
And so, the never-ending battle for inches of my/our home continues. In some ways, I am lucky. My chosen passions are largely based around smaller items. There are no surfboards. Individually, a bottle of whisky, a vinyl record or a wristwatch – they are small. Easily tucked away in a drawer or cupboard. However, it’s when these passions are placed into the hands of a collector – much bigger issues grow. Individually, they are harmless. Together, they become a problem.
For when these, seemingly insignificant, items are pulled together – they can start to form an amorphous blob – linking together like Megazord to form some kind of space-vacuuming monster.
Whisky, in particular, has been a problem for me in the past. Overaccumulation was the name of the game for many years and the total bottle count hurtled towards triple digits at a rate NASA would have needed clearance for. I had cupboards stuffed to breaking-point in three different rooms of the house. My shelves, so strained, they were bending in the middle, lightly touching the cork of the bottles on the shelf below.
It was objectively a ridiculous situation. No one needs that much whisky in their household. What sort of house guest was I expecting that could possibly justify it?
How was I ever going to realistically get through the bottles I already owned – never mind those that would be accumulated if this process didn’t come to a stop… That was when a decision was made.
A line was drawn in the sand and the purchasing was drastically reduced. I think that not giving into FOMO has become a great discipline – one that anyone can develop through time and regular use, as if it were a muscle.
The first few times we resist it, it feels like loss. We see the social media posts, we read the reviews – we wonder how life could possibly go on without such a masterfully designed collection of malt, water and time. However - eventually, it begins to feel like control.
With this process – and through time – I have slowly started to dismantle our three-room whisky museum. Already, we are down to two rooms. Small steps.
However, I cannot overstate that finding the time to dwindle my existing stock has been challenging. You cannot pour a dram whilst restraining a toddler from performing parkour across every windowsill like an overworked stunt coordinator. I regularly spend every waking moment either moving her away from items that could cause her harm, or moving items away from her she may cause harm to, including the very patient Boston Terrier with whom we cohabit.
Currently, there’s very little time to be found where I can sit just down and slowly enjoy a dram at my own speed. Finding time for these reviews – well, that is just as challenging. Therefore, the collection has not dwindled at the speed I would like, but it feels like we are making moves in the right direction. Both for myself — and for the increasingly flammable nature of my home.
One unexpected benefit of reducing the collection is finding, and cracking open, bottles like this one. Bottles which have been purchased many years ago but have been sitting at the back of the cupboard collecting dust. Untouched for a multitude of reasons.
Sometimes because I had simply forgotten about them. Sometimes because I lost interest. Sometimes because I was afraid that they wouldn’t live up to the version I had built in my head.
Some bring back great memories, even if they are a little… hazy. Others, feel like poor purchases, made on a whim or in the midst of a FOMO frenzy. Often though, they are proving to be a great surprise, once finally in the glass.
Enthusiasm, like furniture, takes up space. Eventually we must decide which version of ourselves we’re furnishing the house for. So, in the spirit of reclaiming space - both physical and psychological - I reached into the depths at the back of the cupboard and pulled out a bottle purchased at the height of my once strong Wolfburn devotion.
Review
Wolfburn No.270, Small Batch Series, 6000 bottles, bottled 2018, 3 year old, first-fill bourbon, 46% ABV
£60 paid, now sold out
This Wolfburn No. 270 formed part of the Highland distillery’s early small batch releases; a series of limited runs from one of the most northerly mainland distilleries in Scotland. Made entirely from their unpeated malt, you might assume this release was intended to showcase the distillery’s spirit itself. However, matured in half-sized, first-fill ex-bourbon barrels, the intention is clear: this was about extracting wood influence. Quickly.
Cards on the table — I was a big fan of Wolfburn in its early years. I tried their new make at a Spirit of Alba festival many years ago, poured discreetly under the table by their rep while the distillery was still finding its feet. It was clean, promising, and full of potential. I felt that the early releases carried that same energy. I was excited.
As such, I had been picking up Wolfburn bottles with regularity. At any one point I usually had six or seven different Wolfburn bottles open for sampling – I had the Help for Heroes releases, Valentine’s Day releases (don’t ask), Highland Games editions, as well as these numbered small batches.
I was so committed that I even acquired a custom-engraved Wolfburn stone display plinth at one point. That’s not enthusiasm. That’s infrastructure.
This particular bottle has sat in my collection since about 2018. Unopened. Pushed to the back of the cupboard and largely forgotten.
This has partly been due to my growing disappointment with what has been released from the distillery in recent years; but it was largely due to my disappointment with another release in this series, which I also purchased, Wolfburn No. 128. It felt thin and overly worked by the cask - more oak than character. Therefore, I felt little desire to open another one so shortly afterwards.
Now, with a renewed sense of resolve - and a growing need to clear shelf space – it feels like the right time to open it…
Score: 4/10
Some promise.
TL;DR
Pleasant on the nose, overworked on the palate
Nose
It opens with an unmistakably light and youthful character. Fresh, green and raw. There is apple, melon and pear.
There’s a confectionery sweetness - green jelly beans, specifically. In the back end, there is an additional floral or herby note, suggesting a type of blossom. However, in the background of it all, there is a bready, dusty and yeasty aspect that is impossible to miss.
Palate
Immediately, it’s clear that the light blossom from the nose doesn’t make the journey to the palate. There’s a denser, more assertive oak presence - unsurprising given what is expected from small first-fill bourbon casks.
Underneath that there is still a fruit influence. It sits in an awkward middle ground — beyond fresh, not quite stewed. Overripe. The spirit teases sweetness, with very minor hints of caramel and burnt sugar being able to be picked up when going looking for it, but it never quite fully accomplishes it.
At the tail end of the sip, there is a spiciness; although, it’s a dull, drying spice – honestly, adding more texture than taste.
The Dregs
There can be little doubt that the small barrel has accelerated the wood influence on this relatively youthful spirit. There is a dry oak influence that hangs around for a good amount of time at the back of your throat. I enjoyed nosing this dram more than I did on the palate.
The palate was a little too woody, and one-note for my preferences. It’s certainly not one I am overly enthused by, but it is …fine.
There’s something fitting about finally opening a bottle purchased at the height of my Wolfburn enthusiasm; left untouched through years of creeping scepticism. But when I’m trying to justify every inch of shelf space in a house already surrendering to toddler furniture, “fine” just isn’t going to cut it.
A reminder that not every bottle from our peak enthusiasm deserves its shelf space today.
Score: 4/10
Tried this? Share your thoughts in the comments below. AM
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