C (124:31)
Yeah. On my way out to this trip up to London, I needed to come in a day early so that I didn't have to rush to the airport and things. And fortunate timing. A buddy of mine was having a birthday and also could put me up for the night. So I came, you know, arrived with gift in hand. And that gift was a fine Highland whiskey by the name of Tullibardine the 18. In fact, Tullibardine is not the oldest whiskey and not the oldest distillery in the world. It's in an. It's in Perthshire, which is just north of Edinburgh, about 75 minute in a little town they call Blackford, named supposedly for the fact that a Nordic queen died there in the 10th century trying to ford the river. So they called it Blackford. But if today you would drive out of Edinburgh on the M9 and get up to Blackford, which is where Televardine is. Blackford is famous for the first recorded sale of beer in Scotland. So Telebardine is also a hill and as well as had a castle and things on it as well. And in 1488, King James IV bought beer from that area in Blackford. Barrels of beer for his coronation beer had been made there since the 12th century. The water there, the spring is absolutely phenomenal. So it was a great beer making place. He was so happy with that beer in 1488 that the first Royal Charter of Scotland ever given was to the brewery there in 1503. So this is super old school and has nothing to do with the whiskey made today, except that you will not notice on a Tullibardin bottle it says 1488. And the only reason is because that's because of King James and his beer. What is at Tullibardin that is that ancient is the Tullibardin Chapel. That chapel was originally built in 1446 and had expanded and so forth until about the 16th century, where it still stands today, largely untouched since the 16th century. And that's where the name Tillabardine for the distillery actually comes from. There were several attempts to open distilleries in that area. So 1798, William and Henry Bannerman started the distillery, but it only ran for about a year and it shut down. But they did name it for the chapel, which at that point was already 300 years old. So that, you know, they use the name for there. There was another distillery set up in 1814 which ran until 181937 that burned down and wasn't replaced so that by 1900 there are three breweries, two of which are soon about to bankrupt in a maltings facility. The last brewery standing there runs until about 1927 and then all alcohol production stops in the Blackford area until the last distillery standing is bought by William Delm Evans. This is the guy who, who built the Jura distillery and facilities and the Craig Lache. And so in 47 he buys the land that this the shutdown brewery and in 49 starts producing spirit from it. And that's essentially the distillery that stands till this day. A few years on by 1953 William is. Has health problems and so he sells it to the Brody Hepburn Group who run it for 20 years or so. When it gets merged into Invercorating Gordon Distilleries. This is one of those few stories where it's a Scottish distillery not owned by Diageo. In 1971, when Invre Gordon has control of it, they go up to. They double the number of stills, expand the washbacks and so forth. Lot of what is at Tullibard need today comes from the Invergordon expansion. It's acquired by White And Mackie White McKay, which is the blenders. And they use a lot of the. Their intent in acquiring it was to use a lot of the alcohol that was in storage, the laid up barrels for their blends. But they find that a lot of those barrels are in fairly rough shape and not the quality they want in their blends. And so by 1994 they shut everything down and it stays mothballed for almost a decade until a private consortium run by Michael Beamish and Douglas Ross acquired the distillery for maybe a million pounds like a bargain again with a lot of laid up barrels. They had intended to take those old casks and sell them, but they too found they had problems and so actually started running the stills and brought in some specialist distillers and got things up and running again. So that by 2011 they sold it to Picard Vin and Spirits, which is a French conglomerate of wine and spirit making these days. That that group has been reorganized. By 2013 it was called Tororo Distillers. They also own the Highland Queen blend and that's been the controlling interest of Tullibardine ever since. So these, this is nominally a Highland but it's the very, very southern part of the Highlands. You know, the south side of Edinburgh, you'd be going into the lowlands. So it's kind of its own space. It's not that close to spay. They're big on bourbon casks, but also use a lot of wine casks because they are ultimately owned by a vintner as well. So they have access to a lot of wine casks. Production is a sort of mid scale. 2 million a year. 2 million liters a year with a 6 ton mash ton, 9 washbacks of about 38,000 liters each. They use wooden lids on those 52 hour fermentations. Very middling. Two 20,000 liter wash stills, two 16,000 liter spirit stills. So nothing massive. And again, you'll find many. Most of their whiskey is aged in bourbon casks. They're big on first fill and second fill. So first fill means fresh from, from America, used once, second fill, they've already had scotch in them once and now they're, they're using it again. But most of the first fills and now most of the aging will happen in those remade bourbon casks and then they will do a year or nine months in some kind of finishing cask. Might be sherry, might be any number of the French wines they have access to. Marseille, Sauternes, Burgundy, Pinot. So there's lots of choices there. That is not what happens with this 18. This 18 is almost, it would almost be a speyside in a lot of ways because it is just first filled bourbon. It's finished in sherry and it is very spayish. It is light and fruity, full of caramel and vanilla. And I had brought it as a gift and said you can put this away if you want to keep it. No, no, we'll open it. And we finished it at the party because it was that good. 43% probably has some color in it. They don't say it doesn't, so it probably does. But for an 18 year old, little off the beaten path. Most people haven't heard of tillabardine because they don't have the marketing budget that a Diageo has. $140, you know, you can barely get there like a Dalmore. Twelve is that price. And this is an 18, 18 year old. So it's a bargain for a nice light drinking island and a beautiful bottle, A beautiful box that it comes in. It's a nice gift and I can't recommend it enough. That's one of the cheapest 18 year olds you'll ever find anywhere in a whiskey.
