Cask owners

@andydkelly If you leave it at cask strength you may find an 18 YO bourbon matured laddie could be fantastic.

I hope you enjoy your sample plus many more to come! I have a tiny stake in a 40L barrel of Swedish BOX single malt. Probably gonna get mine 2018 when it's ~4 years old.

@andydkelly I totally agree with Nozinan. It is not an Octomore, it's a Bruichladdich with all the light vegetal notes and light fruit notes don't crusch it with the sherry. On the other hand, I like some Bunnahabhain (a light Islay in its own) with quite a lot of sherry but the Bunna is less briny than the Bruich.

I don't have any cask to manage. You could choose to do what ever you want with it, it's part of the fun. But you have to be able to live with the result. If it's terrible and you are still able to be thrilled by the experience, do your own mistakes and go for it. But if you are concerned by the investment it represents and don't want to take chances about the outcome, it would be wise to listen to them.

@andydkelly, I expect that Bruichladdich is advising you to pursue the course which they in their experience believe has the highest probability of a good result. Why might they discourage you from the use of a wine cask? Perhaps because they know that many of their sherry butts are sulphur contaminated as are many of the sherry butts used by every other Scottish distiller. I like a well-done wine finish as well as anyone, and several heavily peated whiskies with wine finishes are favourites of mine, e.g. Octomore Orpheus, Ardbeg Uigeadail, Lagavulin DE, but I would be inclined to listen to the advice of the distillery. This doesn't sound like the heavy peating was used in your barrel, but still I'd listen to the distillery.

Nice to read about members with their own casks. Very impressed and like to hear about your cask strength samples you try.

On the flip side, Nant distillery in Tasmania has defrauded customers for private cask sales. According to a news report they've sold 700 casks of which they're either empty, filled with spirit that is "cask strength" of 43% or sold without the investors knowledge.

If you want to know if you've bought a Nant bottle from one of these casks, simply check for your batch number on the label. The ones with no batch number are from the fraudulently sold casks.

What's the take away? Never invest in Australian whisky industry if you want to see your investment blossom.

When I win the lottery I would like to own several casks . . . this distillery being one of them (or PC)! Thanks for sharing this, it's made me extremely jealous, but in the best possible way

Fwiw, I'd go with the consensus above and follow the distilleries advice - they seem to know what they're doing up there and the thought of tainting a whole cask seems, well, unthinkable.