Balvenie 12 Years Old Cask #5877

Balvenie 12 Years Old Cask #5877 is part of the Single Barrel 12 First Fill programme. Introduced by David Stewart in 1992 as the first Single Barrel release of its kind, each bottle is drawn from a single first-fill ex-Bourbon American oak cask after twelve years of maturation, with no two casks identical. This release was bottled in 2015, for the Dutch market, at 47.8% ABV.

Balvenie was founded in 1892 by William Grant on the same Dufftown estate as Glenfiddich, and remains family owned by William Grant & Sons into its fifth generation. The distillery is one of only a handful in Scotland still operating its own floor maltings, supplying around ten to fifteen per cent of its barley from the adjacent Balvenie Mains farm. Production runs on a single lauter mash tun, a mixed wash back fleet of Douglas fir and stainless steel on 65 to 68 hour fermentations, and an unusual setup of five wash stills feeding six spirit stills. The spirit stills carry the distinctive Balvenie Ball, a bulb on the neck that increases reflux and pushes the new make toward the honeyed, ester-rich profile the distillery is known for.

Ex-Bourbon American white oak (Quercus alba) was charred for the original bourbon fill, breaking down lignin into vanillin and syringaldehyde and releasing whisky lactones from the wood. The fresh-fill bourbon strips the most aggressive oak character, leaving the Balvenie spirit to draw on the secondary layers of soft oak, vanilla and coconut against the distillery's honeyed Speyside profile.