Taste Guide: Blanc de Blancs Champagne Cask
Blanc de Blancs (literally "white from white" in French) refers to a wine made exclusively from white grapes. In the Champagne wine-growing region, where the term originally comes from, this is a sparkling wine produced almost exclusively from Chardonnay grapes. This contrasts with Blanc de Noirs, which is made only from red grapes. This is cheaper, as Chardonnay grapes are considerably more expensive. However, a Blanc de Blancs is also much easier to age and has the potential to develop very favourably over time.
In the summer of 2022, Kilchoman bought 40 Blanc de Blancs casks from Champagne for the first time. Twelve of them were used for finishing, the rest were filled with New Make for full maturation.
The finishing casks were almost 6-year-old ex-Bourbon barrels (No. 1100/2016 – 1111/2016), which were decanted into Blanc de Blancs casks on 8 August and 6 September 2022.
At Fèis Ìle 2023, participants in the masterclass with Anthony Wills on 1 June 2023 were able to taste a Blanc de Blancs finish (cask no. 1110/2016) for the first time.
The world’s first Blanc de Blancs Cask Finish bottling was released in July 2023 as part of the Uniquely Islay Series – An Samhradh 2023 in Germany (1111/2016). The release for the Alaska-based beer, wine and spirits chain Brown Jug (1102/2016) was bottled a few days earlier, but was not released until August 2023. The 2nd Blanc de Blancs Cask Finish for the USA followed at the end of August 2023 with the bottling of cask no. 1108/2016 in the renowned ImpEx Cask Evolution Series.
In October 2023, two more Blanc de Blancs Single Cask Finish bottlings were released: one in the Canadian province of Québec (1109/2016) and one for the Italian market (1100/2016).
A wider audience was first introduced to a Kilchoman Blanc de Blancs cask finish with the release of the 12th Kilchoman Club Edition, a two-cask small batch, on 6 December 2023.
Although the cask 1107/2016 was bottled for the Kilchoman Distillery Shop on 15 May 2023, it only appeared on the shelves of the Visitor Centre on 16 November 2023 as the seventh Blanc de Blancs Finish release of 2023.
This marked the end of the first wave of Kilchoman Blanc de Blanc Finish bottlings, most of which had been finished for less than a year. The second wave, with a significantly longer finishing period of over two years, started in January 2025 with a Blanc de Blancs Finish release for three German whisky shops. Another release, bottled in September 2024 with a finishing period of 24 months, appeared in Japan at the end of April 2025. As expected, these bottlings have a much more pronounced Blanc de Blancs wine flavour.
The bottling for Japan was initially labelled ‘Champagne Single Cask Finish’, which Kilchoman had previously avoided for legal reasons.
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Previous Blanc de Blancs cask releases by Kilchoman:
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