Friday, 15 March 2013

Caskstrength & Carry On 'C'... REVEALED!

Here it is folks... Caskstrength & Carry On 'C'
Hello tender folk.  Two years ago, Caskstrength embarked on a fairly ambitious adventure.  Looking at the landscape of the whisky business, we set a long term plan to try and bottle something whisk(e)y-related from every letter of the alphabet.  We began with Arran and the reaction to the whisky was certainly overwhelming.  So we moved on to BenRiach, which was equally well received.  Yippee we thought.

Next up and our search for a suitable 'C' was a little bit tougher.  Whilst there are no shortage of distilleries beginning with the letter C, none of them felt quite right and we decided to focus our attention on the world of blends.  Let's not forget folks that blended whisky is FAR more important in the grand scheme of things than the humble single malt. In fact, without the buoyancy of blended whisky internationally, many of our favourite distilleries would simply cease to exist.  As a result we feel that it's hugely important to take a sledgehammer and smash the snobbery against blended whisky squarely in the face, banishing it to the world of the beard (ok, not all beards), the sock/sandal combo and the anally retentive whisky bore, who won't drink anything else save for the most obscure single casks.

So with all that in mind, we decided to approach one of the most popular and enduring names in blended whisky to see if they'd be up for letting us have a tinker with our own version.  Amazingly, they said yes and thus began our fantastically educational journey into how to put together a limited edition Cutty Sark Blended Whisky. Below is a short film giving some background into how much fun we had putting this together.


**for those of you reading this via our mailing list, you can lick here for the video**

Our Caskstrength & Carry On Cutty Sark will be officially unveiled on the 25th March and on sale from the 27th March, once again through our dear friends at Master Of Malt.  Bottled at 51.4% (UK 90 Proof) the release ties in with the 90th anniversary of the blend, which was officially born on the 23rd March 1923.  Just 500 bottles have been blended by Caskstrength alongside the totally brilliant Cutty Master Blender, Kirsteen Campbell.

The price for this limited edition, high strength blend will be around £35 RRP and the first 100 bottles sold will come with this attractive-yet-functional-Cutty-coloured-double sided-tote-bag AND a special commemorative newspaper we've had printed to mark the release!  Can't say fairer than that, can we!!

As this is a relatively robust whisky (cask strength, in a sense) it works well with a dash of water, in a cocktail, as a highball or just on its own, hopefully proving that the blend is the all-round superstar of the whisky world.

We hope you enjoy drinking it as much as we have putting it together.

Cheerio, Neil & Joel