Stories from the Bond Store #002

“Our Exploration Series allows us to do exactly that; explore. By asking; what’s worked for other distilleries, what hasn’t, and most importantly what might work for us in the future. This Series is about sharing our explorations of these Independent Bottlings with our Vanguard Members.”

During the lockdown, we’ve kept busy extracting cask samples throughout the bond store. In the Spirit Lab, we’ve married samples and cut the whisky to various strengths before sending off to our industry Tasting Panel in Melbourne for review, tasting notes and most importantly their seal of approval before we begin bottling.

We are both delighted and privileged to have some of Australia’s and Melbourne’s whisky industry elite join our Advisory Tasting Panel including Brooke Hayman; owner and founder of Whisky and Alement, Alex Moores; Victorian and Tasmanian Ambassador of Scotch Malt Whisky Society and Founder of Dark Valley Whisky, and chairing our panel; Dominic Arcaro who is a stalwart of the Melbourne whisky scene. Together with the four Company Directors, they are more than up to the task as you can see from the behind-the-scenes image below.

Image: Bill Lark addresses the room. Photo: John Jarvis.

With our first three whiskies in the Exploration Series approved and abv % strengths agreed, we were able to decant our much anticipated final cask of the Belgrove heavily-coastal-peated single malt into the marrying vat in early July. This cask (shown below) was one of the original 3 pilot French Oak Tempranillio casks originally filled in September 2015 and then refilled with peated spirit in April 2018. A sample has recently been sent to Sweden for a laboratory ppm test (parts per million) phenol measure of peat, which we look forward to sharing with you when we receive the results.

It has been a long wait, but there is light at the end of the tunnel as we are currently working on our national launch events, both virtual and in-person (Covid-dependent) including a launch event with Whisky and Alement, all the details of which we look forward to sharing with the Vanguard in our August update.

Yours in spirit,

& THE SPIRIT THIEF TEAM.

Together, we are the Vanguard.