The Importance of Cask Selection

At Sullivans Cove Distillery, when it comes to maturing our whisky, it’s never about just setting a timer.

Each cask is unique, and each will mature in its own time, with a thousand little variables all contributing to each cask’s individual character and timeline. And because most of our bottlings are single cask, you get to taste that individual character in every different release. This also means that we can’t exactly predict when a cask will be ready to bottle, so we do extensive testing and tasting throughout each cask’s maturation to determine exactly when it’s ready to bottle.

Day after day, and year after year, we keep track of every single cask in our warehouses, checking for leaks, testing for problems and making sure everything is maturing according to plan. With such a limited amount of stock in bond, every cask is precious, so far from a “set and forget” method of ageing, we check every cask every year to make sure it’s on the right track.

This is one of the fundamental differences between Sullivans Cove and many commercial distilleries, who produce whisky on the basis of sales forecasts and schedules. We do things exactly the other way around, only selling our whiskies when they’re just right, no matter how long it takes.

At Sullivans Cove we only use full-sized casks between 200 and 300 litres in capacity for aging our whisky, and because our new make spirit is rich and rustic, it needs a long, slow maturation to become its best self, so we usually won’t start tasting until it’s at least eight years old. Once a cask gets to around that age, we begin sampling to see if it’s ready to bottle. Our Head Distiller Heather gives the crew a list of casks to sample based on age and when they were last tasted, and then they head out into the warehouse to collect the samples, climbing up into the racks to access the casks where they lie, and pulling samples out with a spirit thief.

Once the samples are pulled from the casks, they’re carefully diluted to bottling strength, labelled, logged in and passed on to our tasting panel, which meets at least once or twice a week to evaluate every sample. We evaluate the samples on the basis of nose, palate, finish, texture and complexity, as well as looking for any faults and trying to identify that particular character that makes a whisky unmistakably Sullivans Cove. At this point, it’s more a matter of art than science, and an intimate knowledge of our stocks, as well as other great whiskies, is key to making the right decision.

The tasting panel records their thoughts and scores, and with any luck they’ll find the next cask of whisky to bottle. The whole team from all areas of the business are welcome to sit in on our tastings. Our more junior team members learn and gain an understanding of Sullivans Cove style, while our more senior crew make the final decision about what to bottle.