What’s the Difference Between Single Cask and Single Malt?
The simple answer: single cask whisky is a whisky that has come from one single cask.
Single malt whisky is a whisky from one single distillery in Scotland. However, to produce the volumes that single malt distilleries are bottling, it takes a hell of a lot of casks blended together to create a consistent product like Glenfiddich 12.
I don’t know how many bottles of Glenfiddich 12 are produced every year, but it will be up in the tens of thousands at least. It’s distributed all over the world.
The blending team at Glenfiddich will use a whole load of casks, some American oak ex-bourbon and some European oak ex-sherry. And these will all be vatted or blended together. Water is then added to bring the ABV down to 40%, and then it’s bottled.
The question is, how does that differ from single malt?
This means that when you’re drinking single malt whisky, you’re getting a flavour profile created by mixing different wood types together to make that consistent flavour, taste, colour, and smell.
Single cask whisky, on the other hand, is just one cask. It gives us the opportunity to see what a whisky would taste like from just one cask.
If I use Glenfiddich as an example, I know what its core releases taste like, but I don’t know what a Glenfiddich tastes like from one single ex-bourbon cask.
Single cask whisky is often what we see from Independent Bottlers.
They’ll buy a cask, or a ‘parcel’ of casks from brokers or distilleries. When the whisky is ready, it won’t be vatted with any other whisky, and the majority of the time, water won’t be added, so the whisky will be cask strength.
From one single cask, bottlers can get anything from 50 to 300+ bottles depending on the size of the cask.
Why is Single Cask Whisky Popular?
Single cask whisky is popular because it gives the drinker the opportunity to try something a bit different.
If it’s a single cask release from a distillery, it’s going to give the drinker something different to what they’re used to. You often get the chance to buy a Distillery Exclusive Hand Fill bottle. This is a single cask bottling that tends to be something a bit different to the usual releases.
One of my favourites was the Tomatin 6 Year Old Virgin Oak Distillery Exclusive Hand Fill. A cracking dram and a chance to try Tomatin at a young age and from a virgin oak cask.
@whiskystories Tasting whisky samples from the cask, in the warehouse at Tomatin Distillery. This 6 year old virgin oak hand-fill exclusive was an incredible dram. Virgin oak is something that I love to sample to really see what influence wood can have on whisky. No sherry, no bourbon, just straight up oak. And this was amazing. #tomatin #tomatindistillery #distillery #distillerylife #whisky #whiskygram #scotch #scotchwhisky #highlandwhisky #whiskey #singlemalt #singlemaltscotch #caskstrength ♬ original sound – Whisky Stories
From an Independent Bottler’s point of view, this gives them the chance to bottle single cask whiskies from distilleries that might not be very common.
I’ve enjoyed a Tamdhu that was matured in an ex-bourbon cask. Tamdhu only releases whisky in Oloroso sherry seasoned casks, so this was an opportunity to taste Tamdhu from a bourbon cask.
It also gives the bottler the opportunity to ‘finish’ the whisky in a different cask, which could be a sweet wine cask, a rum cask, or a sherry cask for a matter of weeks, months, or even years.
Overcoming the Hesitation
Single cask whisky can put a lot of people off. I was one of them.
You might be thinking: Why trust a bottle from someone else when the single malt from the distillery should surely be the best? Maybe the distillery thought it wasn’t good enough…
These are all valid points, and it’s the job of the Independent Bottler to release good quality whisky. Like everything, there are good, really good, and not so good Independent Bottlers. It comes down to how they source the whisky and then what they do with it when it’s going into a bottle. But when I eventually wrapped my head around single cask whisky, it opened up a new world for me.
There’s so much out there, and some of it is amazing and lots of it is okay. It’s down to how you enjoy it at the end of the day.
But to simplify the point:
- Single Malt: A blend of casks mixed together
- Single Cask: One single cask
Want to know more about whisky differences? Check out the Difference between Single Malt and Blended Whisky
