'HERESY' SMALL BATCH DELIGHTS
Cocoa drift

In 2024 we revealed that the Society’s very own ‘solera’ system was taking shape at our bonded warehouse in Scotland’s Central Belt. The inspiration came from the Whisky Team’s extensive experience of visits to the sherry bodegas of Spain’s sherry triangle, where the system is integral to the maturation of sherry.

As Ed Furmston-Evans from the Whisky Team explains: “Solera systems are a traditional way of maturing sherry in Jerez, where the casks at the bottom hold the oldest stock. As they deplete, stock from the casks above gets moved down. So, you end up with this ever-developing blend which allows for really great consistency and massive complexity.”

Our own ‘Heresy’ series of small-batch blended malts has always taken inspiration from the solera system, without having anything formal in place to replicate its organised structure. The whisky that became the foundation of our early, heavily sherried expressions – Exotic cargo 1 and 2, Spice cannon, Big swirl – all used part of the same parcel of casks that we had first vatted together and then returned to their original wood. Even if we hadn’t put the name on it at the time, it was the seed of our own solera system, creating a consistent blended malt ingredient for future use.

But as we started to exhaust those stocks, we were left with the question: what now? The obvious answer was to take a more formal and long-term approach with the solera.
So, in 2024 we selected 20 hogsheads that would make up the Society’s own solera, vatting those whiskies and returning the resulting blended malt into their original casks. These casks were now kept together and stencilled accordingly to mark them out as part of the solera. The casks used are all either Spanish oak or American oak oloroso hogsheads, some first fills and some second fills when they were first vatted. The desire was to include a variety of sherry cask influences in the make up of this original blended malt.

After being re-filled with the blended malt, the solera casks then slumbered for a year, until we ordered in samples to monitor whisky quality. We loved what we tasted, with the strong sherry influence and waves of spicy notes rolling over our palates, and with huge complexity.
This leads us to Batch 35: Cocoa drift, the first expression to be drawn from this new SMWS sherry cask solera. We selected four hogsheads from the solera, not just on individual merits, but on how they could fit in the overall recipe. Once we were happy with the result, we blended the selected casks together to create this new number in our experimental series of whiskies in clear glass. The rest of the casks were vatted again, and four new sherry hogsheads added to the vatting as replacement for the ones used in Cocoa dift, before being refilled into the original solera hogsheads. One in, one out, as is the current rule.

So, what does this way of working with whisky contribute to its flavours? So far, what we are noticing is an integration of flavours, the different single malt components coming together more harmoniously and distributing wood impact more evenly across the casks. Expect clafoutis and cinnamon liqueur, chocolate bars, blackcurrant jam and caramelised sage. Adding water brings flavours of ras-el-hanout spice mix, coconut-kissed strawberry syrup and cinnamon-dusted tarts, before finishing with mace, allspice and a whisper of bay leaf. It’s rich, bold and complex.

Sounds like your cup of tea? Good, because as our head of whisky creation Euan Campbell puts it: “Over the coming years Society members will have the chance to experience our solera’s evolution through different ever-ageing releases.”