About Johnnie Walker Select Casks Rye Cask Finish Scotch Whisky
Upon his father's death in 1820, a young grocer named Johnnie Walker invested his £417 inheritance into a grocery and spirits shop on High Street in Scotland. While Walker himself was a teetotaler, he sold a popular single malt whisky under the name Walker's Kilmarnock Whisky (at the time, it was common for each store to have its own unique spirits). Walker's store was moderately successful, but by the time he retired in the 1850s, whisky sales represented just 8% of his business.
In 1857, Alexander Walker — Johnnie Walker's eldest son — inherited the store and began improving its selection of single malt Scotch whiskies. Alexander had previously apprenticed with a tea merchant in Glasgow and there, had learned the art of blending tea. Under his stewardship, the House of Walker began blending whisky and bottling it in an iconic, square bottle adorned with a slanted label. In addition, Walker began crafting exclusive Scotch whiskies for employees and private gatherings — treasured whiskies that were only shared with a select few groups on special occasions.
Inspired by this tradition, Johnnie Walker has unveiled a new “Select Cask” series, in which Johnnie Walker Select Casks Rye Cask Finish Whisky is the inaugural release. The blend itself is dominated by a Cardhu malt, which is expertly married with several other grain whiskies, and is aged for a minimum of 10 years in ex-bourbon barrels. After this initial beautyrest, it is finished in ex-rye casks for approximately one month before bottling.
As a result of this unique finishing process, Johnnie Walker Select Casks Rye Cask Finish Whisky has a smoky nose of burnt marshmallows and graham crackers, which leads to a bold palate filled with notes of dark chocolate, cinnamon, raisin and toasted oak. The finish is exceptionally smooth and bursting with spice.
“We have a team of 13 blenders experimenting with different whiskies,” says Brian Cox, marketing manager for the Johnnie Walker portfolio. “Some experiments, like Double Black, turn out to be very much in the house style and available in enough quantity that we can make them permanent parts of the portfolio. Some are more finite by nature, involving research to learn more about different flavor profiles, aging techniques, and so on. Rye Cask Finish is one of the latter.”
Pick up a brand-new, experimental whiskey today!
About Scotch
Scotch is the most popular whisky in the world and is considered the king of them all! There are five whisky regions in Scotland (six if you count the not officially recognized Islands), and each of them produces spirits with unique properties and distinct tasting notes. (The type of grain used determents the type of the scotch.)
Malt whisky is made of malted barley, and grain whisky uses other grains like corn or wheat. Most of the time, a whisky is blended from different distilleries hence the name blended scotch, but if a malt whisky is produced in a single distillery, we get something extraordinary called a single malt.
Check out our impressive selection of scotch whiskies, find your new favorite in the Top 10 scotch whiskies, or explore our treasury of rare & hard to find scotch whiskies.
