Introducing
the latest addition to The Balvenie
family, The Balvenie 12 Year Old Single Barrel First Fill.
 You
may already have come across this one as
I have been a little slow off the mark
announcing it. Anyway, I would like to
introduce the latest addition to The
Balvenie range, The Balvenie 12 Year Old
Single Barrel First Fill, which as its
title suggests is a single distillation
which has been matured
exclusively in a single first fill American
ex-Bourbon barrel for 12 years.
So what exactly are first fill American
ex-Bourbon barrels? These are American
oak barrels which have previously been
used to mature American Bourbon whiskey,
these ex-Bourbon barrels are brought
over from America and when they are used
to mature Scotch whisky for the first
time, they are known as ‘first fill’
barrels. These American oak barrels,
which are cared for by The Balvenie’s
own coopers, impart distinctive notes of
vanilla and spice to the maturing
spirit.
No two barrels are 100%
identical therefore you will find subtle
differences in each of The Balvenie 12
Single Barrel releases.
The
Balvenie 12 Year Old Single Barrel First
Fill is bottled at 47.8% abv and is a
non chill-filtered, as we like it. Each
bottle is drawn from a single cask of a
single distillation therefore the number
of bottles from each individual cask
will vary but each cask will yield no
more than 300 bottles. Each bottle is
also hand-numbered and will carry the
number of the cask it was matured in.
The Balvenie 12 year
Single Barrel effectively replaces the much
loved Balvenie 15 year old Single Barrel
but for a while at least you will see
both together on the the shelves in
whisky shops as The Balvenie 15 year old
Single Barrel will be slowly phased out.
The new
Balvenie 12 year Single Barrel is now
part of what the Balvenie are calling
"The Balvenie Connoisseur Range" which I
suspect we will see more additions to in
the near future. Following the addition
of
The
Balvenie 17 Doublewood late
last year the current Balvenie core
range now looks like this:
- The Balvenie DoubleWood 12 Year
Old
- The Balvenie Caribbean Cask 14
Year Old
- The Balvenie DoubleWood 17 Year
Old
- The Balvenie PortWood, 21
Year Old
You will notice that I haven't listed
The Balvenie Signature 12 Year Old as part of the core range, this
is because like the Balvenie 15 year old
Single Barrel it is also being phased
out. So if you have a liking for any of
these two Balvenie expressions I suggest you start
stocking up.
The Balvenie 12 year
old Single Barrel has a RRP of £45 and will be available
from this month in both the UK and USA.
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