Bowmore (whiskey distillery)
| Bowmore | |
|---|---|
 View of the distillery from the lake side |
|
| country | Scotland |
| region | Islay |
| Geographical location | 55 ° 45 '26.5 " N , 6 ° 17' 10" W |
| Type | Paint |
| status | active |
| owner | Suntory |
| Founded | 1779 |
| founder | David Simson |
| Water source | River Laggan |
| Washstill (s) | 2 × 30,940 l |
| Spiritstill (s) | 1 × 14,750 l, 1 × 14,637 l |
| Production volume | 2,000,000 l |
| Website | www.bowmore.com |
Bowmore (local pronunciation [ˌboʊ̯'mɔ: ɹ] ; also: ['boʊ̯mɔ: ɹ] ) is a whiskey distillery on the island of Islay in Scotland . The distillery is owned by the Japanese-American Beam Suntory group.
history
Founded in 1779 by David Simson, the whiskey distillery named after the town of Bowmore was the first legal distillery on Islay and one of the oldest in Scotland. Like many Scottish whiskey distilleries, Bowmore changed hands several times over the years: first the founder, farmer and trader David Simson, and later his family, ran the company until William & James Mutter became the owners of the distillery in 1837. In 1925 Joseph Robert Holmes took over the facilities. The distillery was renamed Bowmore Distillery Co and owned by Sherriff's Bowmore Distillery Ltd. During the Second World War the distillery was closed, the buildings served as a base for flying boats . In 1950 ownership of the facilities went to William Grigor & Sons Ltd. over. This company went bankrupt in 1963, whereupon Bowmore from Stanley P. Morrison Ltd. was taken over, to which Auchentoshan and Glen Garioch belong temporarily. From this time onwards, today's Bowmore image was shaped. The name was changed to Morrison Bowmore in 1987. The last change of ownership took place in 1994, and the company has been part of the Japanese Suntory Group ever since . Special features of the distillery are its own malt house and a warehouse converted into a swimming pool, in which the heat generated during production is used for heating. Bowmore has a visitor center and can be visited.
Characteristic
Most of the distillery's whiskeys are stored in Spanish sherry barrels , which gives them their own flavor. Other factors are the water used by the Laggan River , which is given its own note by the surrounding peat, the barley malt peated with approx. 25 ppm and storage in warehouses, some of which are 1.5 meters in salt water at high tide. In addition to the smoke and peat note typical of Islay whiskeys, most Bowmores offer a clear sherry aroma combined with a pleasant dryness and a maritime-salty note. Bowmore whiskeys are colored darker with food coloring ( E 150a ); their bitter taste hardly affects the quality of the whiskeys.
Products
The product range of distillery bottlings shows that the distillery is very much focused on the single malt whiskey market. Nevertheless, the whiskey is also used for blends (Islay Legend, King Pride, Black Bottle, Clan Roy) or sold by barrels and distributed by independent bottlers .
Legend (around 8 years)
With around eight years of maturation, the Legend is Bowmore's youngest distillery bottling. The sherry notes are not as pronounced as in older bottlings. For the Italian market there is Legend bottling with the age of 8 years. Legend has not been produced for a long time. In 2008 it was released again with a new bottle design.
Surf (around 8 years)
Surf is a version of the Legend bottled for duty free retail.
Tempest (10 years)
Has been bottled in six batches so far and matured in first-fill bourbon barrels. The alcohol content is 56% vol.
12 years
The youngest distillery bottling with age information and thus also the most common of the distillery.
Enigma (12 years)
Exclusively for the duty-free trade bottled 12-year-old variant with a higher proportion of distillates from sherry barrels.
Cask Strength (around 13 years)
In contrast to other whiskey bottlings, cask strength bottlings are not reduced to an alcohol content of 40% with spring water, but are sold only slightly diluted. The Bowmore Cask bottling has an alcohol content of 56%.
Darkest (around 15 years)
Advertised by the distillery as the successor to the Black Bowmore , according to criticism it comes close to its quality, but gives an idea of the direction in which this most famous whiskey of the distillery was headed. After 12 years, it is bottled in Spanish oak barrels and aged for up to 3 years in first-fill Oloroso sherry barrels.
Claret (14.5 years)
At the end of the 1990s, Bowmore refined 12-year-old whiskey stored in bourbon barrels for another 2.5 years in Bordeaux barrels and bottled it at cask strength (56%). The limited edition of 12,000 bottles was very successful and the market price multiplied in a short time.
Dusk (around 14 years)
The successor to the Claret, which has gone into series production, is bottled with only 50% instead of 56% and is stored in Bordeaux barrels for 18 months to 2 years.
Voyage (14.5 years)
In 2000, Bowmore tried to repeat the Claret success with port wine. Also limited to 12,000 bottles and filled at 56%, the Voyage is stored in so-called ruby port pipes . Color: dark copper, mahogany. Aroma: fresh lemon, smoky, dried fruit (wine). Taste: oily, peppery, sweet, then comes fruit (black currants, plums).
Dawn (around 14 years)
The Voyage also got a series successor - the Dawn is bottled at 51.5% and its post-aging time in port wine barrels is only 18 to 24 months.
Mariner (15 years)
The 15-year-old Bowmore Mariner is smokier than comparable whiskeys from the distillery. It is bottled at 43%.
Natural (16 years)
The most recent self-bottling with an indication of the year was stored in bourbon barrels, was not cold-filtered and has a barrel strength of 51.8%. The first edition from 1989 was limited to 36,000 bottles.
17 years
With its more delicate peatiness and soft, sweet sherry note, this whiskey offers a foretaste of the mild complexity of the older Bowmore bottlings.
Seadragon (30 years)
The oldest and therefore most expensive original bottling from the Bowmore distillery. Due to the increase in whiskey demand in recent years, the old vintages have also become increasingly rare, causing the price to rise again.
Black
The Bowmore Black is one of the whiskeys that is one of the greatest rarities, sometimes it is also referred to as the whiskey of the century . It got its name from its unusually dark color, which it received from its storage in special barrels. The whiskey with around 50% alcohol content was distilled in 1964 and bottled in 1993 (2000 bottles, 50%), 1994 (also 2000 bottles and 50%) and 1995 (1812 bottles with 49%).
Auctions
In September 2007, a 157-year-old bottle of Bowmore Single Malt fetched £ 29,400 at an auction in Glasgow . In 2018, a bottle of Bowmore Black fetched £ 21,000.
See also
literature
- Andrew Jefford: Peat Smoke and Spirit. A Portrait of Islay and its Whiskies, headline, London 2004, ISBN 978-0-7472-4578-0 , pp. 106-123.
- Charles MacLean (Ed.): Whiskey. World Guide, Regions, Distillers, Malts, Blends, Tasting Notes. Dorling Kindersley, London et al. 2008, ISBN 978-0-7566-3349-3 .
- Walter Schobert: The whiskey dictionary. Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Frankfurt / M. 2003, ISBN 978-3-596-15868-3 .
- Ingvar Ronde (Ed.): Malt Whiskey Yearbook 2017 MagDig Media Limited, Shrewsbury. 2016, ISBN 978-0-9576553-3-1
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Andrew Jefford: Peat Smoke and Spirit . headline, London 2004, ISBN 978-0-7472-4578-0 , pp. 121 .
- ^ Rare Scotch whiskey tops world record auction price ( Memento of November 9, 2007 in the Internet Archive ), accessed on January 24, 2013
- ↑ The 75th Auction | Bowmore Black 1964 50 Year Old. Retrieved April 4, 2018 .