The day it stops being a cask.
Regauge in the morning, reduction and bottling after lunch, labels last. You can come and watch, and most people do, because standing next to something you bought a decade ago while it goes into glass is genuinely one of the better days out on this farm.
What happens, hour by hour.
08:00 — Regauge
The warehousekeeper draws the cask down, measures the volume and takes the strength. That figure is the figure. Nothing is rounded in our favour and you are welcome to watch it being taken.
09:30 — The last sample
Straight from the cask, at whatever strength it has ended up at. This is the only time you will taste it at full cask strength, and it is worth the early start.
10:30 — Reduction
Water is added to bring it to 46% ABV. It is done slowly and then left to sit, because reducing quickly produces a haze and a thin mouthfeel.
13:00 — Bottling
Into 700ml bottles, no chill-filtration, no colouring. A small line, a lot of noise, and about four hundred bottles an hour.
15:00 — Labelling
Cask number, wood, fill date, outturn date, strength, bottle number and total outturn. You sign the first label.
16:00 — Duty
The spirit is entered for release from the warehouse and excise duty and VAT fall due. This is the only invoice you will receive after the day you bought the cask.
Within ten days — The pallet
Delivered on a tail-lift to a signature, to somebody over eighteen. A barrel is roughly twenty-four cases and it will not fit in a hallway.
Bottling days already scheduled.
Two people per cask, included. It is a working bottling hall, so closed shoes and no children under sixteen.
Thursday12 March
Friday13 March
Thursday18 June
Friday9 October
Pick a time and we will hold it for ten minutes. Hold that slot
This is a demonstration build. Nothing here books anything, no card details are collected, and the slots above are illustrative.
What comes off the line.
The bottle
- Strength
- 46% ABV
- Size
- 700ml
- Filtration
- NoneIt will go cloudy in ice. That is what non-chill-filtered means
- Colouring
- NoneThe colour is the wood and nothing else
The label
- Cask number
- Yours, stencilled and printed
- Dates
- Fill date and outturn date, both
- Bottle number
- Out of the total outturn
- Age statement
- The years in wood, which is the honest number
The paperwork
- Regauge certificate
- Volume and strength, from the warehousekeeper
- Duty calculation
- Litres of alcohol multiplied by the rate on the day
- VAT invoice
- On goods and duty together, at 20%
- Delivery note
- Signed for, by somebody over eighteen
The part people are not expecting.
A two-hundred-litre barrel comes out as roughly two hundred and eighty bottles. That is about twenty-four cases, it weighs a third of a tonne, and it arrives on a pallet.
People who have thought about the whisky for eight years have very often not thought about where they are going to put it. We will split a delivery across up to four addresses at no extra cost, and we will hold the balance in the duty-paid store for up to a year if you need a while to work it out.
What we will not do is sell the surplus for you. Selling alcohol wholesale requires approval under HMRC’s Alcohol Wholesaler Registration Scheme, and arranging a sale on your behalf would drag the whole product back towards the thing it is carefully not.
Cask strength sample
The only time you taste it undiluted.
Two places
Included with every cask.
Four addresses
Split the pallet at no extra cost.
A year to decide
We will hold the balance duty-paid.
The questions bottling day gets.
Between 46% and cask strength, yes, and it changes the bottle count considerably. Below 46% we will argue with you, and below 40% it cannot legally be called whisky at all.
Up to twenty-four bottles of the outturn can be 200ml, which is what most people do for presents. The rest is 700ml.
You can have your name on it and a line of your own. The cask number, the strength, the dates and the volume are fixed, because they are legally required and because they are the interesting part.
It is yours if you want it, collected from the farm at your cost. Otherwise it goes back into the racking as a refill cask for somebody else.
What the duty actually costs.
Charged per litre of pure alcohol, on the day it leaves the warehouse, with a worked example.
