Making the experience of super-luxury spirits crazily affordable and accessible!
Read more about the Spirits project.
- Suggested retail price: $389
- This Thursday at 6:30 p.m., we're pouring a one-ounce pour for $11
Balvenie had great success with their Tun 1401 series. The initial bottles are now selling for 5 times what they were when I first poured the first batch of 1401 for you just a few years ago. You’re welcome. Well, David Stewart has decided to discontinue the Tun 1401 and in its place launched Tun 1509. The first batch of which I present to you Thursday.
A tun is basically a large wooden vessel meant for marrying several casks of whiskey in a small batch before further blending or bottling. Barrel-aging of whisky is not a science. It is informed by science, but it remains a craft. Oak whisky barrels are still made by hand, not machine, ever. Different barrels of whisky mature differently, due to the differences in the barrels, where each barrel is stored and other magical things that we don’t completely understand. Elves?
The master blender’s job is to select different barrels from throughout the stock that will come together to complement each other and make a complete and complex whisky. These different whisky need time to come together and marry. They do that in a tun. Demand for Tun 1401 was so great that David Stewart decided to have a new tun built, which would accommodate a larger selection of barrels.
This eagerly awaited first batch from tun 1509 involved 42 top quality casks from the distillery: seven European oak sherry butts and 35 traditional American Oak casks. The original Tun 1401 was about 10 casks and the blends were much closer to 50/50 European vs American wood. I am eager to see the differences. We will open one bottle at precisely 6:30. When it's gone, it's gone.
Next Week in The Spirits Project
Balvenie 25 Year!