We are currently in the midst of The Balvenie Whisky Fête, which runs from 13th-15th June, with many of you no doubt planning on heading down there this weekend.
London’s Tavistock Square Gardens has been transformed into a whisky wonderland complete with two handcrafted domes made from cask staves as well as The Balvenie Craftman’s Bothy. David Stewart, the great Malt Master who has who has worked at the distillery for over 50 years is on hand to run tutored tastings amongst various other workshops and goings on.
The doctor will see you now… Balvenie’s Global Ambassador Sam Simmons in his stave hideout.
The thing that has piqued our interest the most however, is the fact that the new batch of The Balvenie Tun 1401 has officially been unveiled to the public.
Marrying tun 1401 is, basically, David Stewart’s favourite plaything. He uses it to vat some of the very best casks The Balvenie have to offer in order to produce a series of truly sublime limited edition expressions that have become extraordinarily popular. (Unsurprisingly.)
The famous tun being filled during the creation of Batch 3.
Batch 8 is a vatting of 9 American Oak casks and 3 European Oak Sherry casks, which spent a number of months marrying in tun 1401 before bottling at 50.2% abv. 2,700 (very popular) bottles have been produced.
With only one in three new batches being released in the UK (as well as Canada and Australia whilst others are destined for the US and travel retail), we simply cannot wait to get our hands on this one! Especially after the exquisite Tun 1401 – Batch 2 and Tun 1401 – Batch 5.
The Balvenie Tun 1401 – a thing of beauty.
(Although this batch has 12 casks… but you get the idea…)
We should also point out that The Whisky Fête is not only a celebration of whisky but of all British craftmanship, part of The Balvenie Masters of Craft awards programme, which has been running for three years now. Let’s allow everybody’s favourite television architect to explain…
Kevin McCloud speaks about last year’s Masters of Craft.
Jake
rlhogben 