Taste Guide: Fino Sherry Cask
In contrast to Oloroso and PX sherry, Kilchoman bottlings from Fino Sherry casks are extremely rare. Moreover, unusually for Kilchoman, not a single Fino Sherry single cask bottling exists to date.
Kilchoman presented a Kilchoman Fino Sherry Cask Finish for the first time with the “Fèis Ìle 2014 Release”. Distilled on 1 July 2009, the whisky was initially matured for a good four years in two fresh ex-bourbon barrels before being matured for three months in a Fino Sherry butt.
It then took over six years for the first Fino Sherry Matured Limited Release. This was launched in shops worldwide in October 2020 and familiarised a wider whisky audience with a Kilchoman whisky matured in a Fino Sherry cask for the first time. The bottling is a vatting of twelve Fino Sherry butts filled in 2014 and 2016 (eleven first-fill and one refill butt) from Bodega Miguel Martin, from which Kilchoman is also known to source all of its Oloroso Sherry casks.
Two and a half years then passed before the second Fino Sherry Cask Matured Limited Release in April 2023. This time, it was a vatting of 20 five-year-old Fino Sherry butts that had been filled in 2018.
Within the Small Batch Series for Selected Markets, whose concept is to illustrate the influence of different “experimental” cask types on Kilchoman whisky, a bottling with Fino Sherry cask content has been released once so far, in November 2022 for the French whisky shop Le comptoir Irlandais.
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What does Kilchoman whisky from a Fino sherry cask taste like?
Compared to Oloroso and Pedro Ximénez, Fino is known to be a drier and more saline type of Sherry, the casks give Kilchoman whisky additional notes of fresh green apples, which combine beautifully with the typical Kilchoman tones of cooked yellow fruits, citrus and maritime peat smoke.
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Kilchoman Fino Sherry Cask Releases:
| Release | Cask No. | Date Filled | Bottled | Maturation |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fèis Kilchoman Fèis Ìle 2014 ReleaseÌle 2014 Release | 328 & 329/2009 | 01.07.2009 | 20.05.2014 | Fino Sherry Butt Finish for 3 months |
| Fino Sherry Matured 2020 Release | 2014 & 2016 | 05.10.2020 | Full maturation: 4-6 years | |
| Fino Sherry Cask Matured 2023 Edition | 2018 | 03/2023 | Full maturation: 5 years | |
| Le comptoir Irlandais Small Batch – Fino | 21.09.2022 | 70% Bourbon / 5% Oloroso Sherry / 25% Fino Sherry |
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