Waterford Blood Brothers

Blood Brothers is an exclusive Micro Cuvée released in 2021 for members of the Friends of Waterford Facebook group, an early community of the distillery's most engaged collectors. The whisky takes its name from the cask format used: 28 first fill American oak 'blood tubs', unusually small 35 litre casks that produce a higher ratio of wood contact to spirit volume than standard Bourbon barrels. An outturn of 900 bottles was produced, each carrying the TÉIREOIR code that links back to the specific cask and farm records.

The use of blood tubs is significant to the cask chemistry. At 35 litres, the surface area to volume ratio is roughly double that of a 200 litre Bourbon barrel, accelerating extraction of vanillin, coconut lactones and toasted wood compounds from the charred inner staves. Spirit matured in blood tubs tends to develop a more intense wood signature than equivalently aged spirit in full size casks, with sharper spice and more pronounced caramelised sugar notes. Maturation ran over four years at 50%. Bottled without chill filtration or added colour.