What Goes Into A Rare Scotch? This New Whisky Series Aims To Explore That

William Grant & Sons, established in 1887 in Scotland, is one of the best known of the independent, family owned companies distilling Scotch through its various brands, such as Glenfiddich and The Balvenie, all of which have significant aging Scotch on hand. Some of this older whisky, in combination with aging stock of rare single malts and grains from long shuttered whisky making operations that was previously snapped up by the Grant family, is now seeing its time to shine in what’s become known as the Rare Case Reserves.

Rare Cask Reserves looks to have gotten off the ground over the first half of 2014 to a small amount of fan fare. During that time releases were seen of a Strathspey Reserve 21-year-old offering to the famous World of Whiskies travel retail stores in Europe, a gift pack of three select 25 year old blends that found its way to a couple of UK retailers and The Annasach Reserve. This latter expression, clocking in at 25 years of age, was made available to a handful of American retailers of which, at last check, seems to still be floating around for sale.

Coming into 2015, it now looks as if the next run of Rare Cask Reserves is popping up in retail. I observed today a bottling surface on a UK retailer website, likely soon to quickly disappear from what will probably be high demand. This would make a lot of sense, given this rare whisky is the first of the Ghosted Reserves part of the Rare Cask program.

The Ghosted Reserves, as the name implies, pulls from that stock of whiskies heralding from Scottish distilleries now just a part of whisky history and folklore. The first bottling in this regard is described as a 26 year old vatting of “malt whisky from Ladyburn, a distillery on the site of Girvan [a current Grant distillery] that closed in 1975 and Inverleven, which closed in 1991.”

This Scotch was bottled at 42% ABV and only 1,400 bottles of it are being released globally at a price point of £300 (around $465 USD). As you can see it, like everything else coming from the Rare Casks Reserves line up, is pulled from finite batches crafted by Grant’s master blender Brian Kinsman. I’ve included a video below which reveals more about Kinsman’s masterful work of a series of one off bottlings that are sure to impress.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvpB-BAIOEA]