On Saturday 19th February 2022, nine club members travelled to the Annandale Distillery to witness the filling of Let it Blaw’s 150th anniversary cask. The whisky is Annandale’s unpeated “Man of Words” single malt which will be left sleeping in a single use Bourbon cask until late 2030.
We were welcomed at the distillery by Andrew Nicolson, who holds the grand title of “Cask Custodian.” Andrew showed us to the coffee shop for some welcome sustenance and thereafter guided us through the workings of the Distillery highlighting the various parts of the process.
The tour ended with the most important part of our day, the filling of Let it Blaw’s cask. Everyone took their turn to fill the cask with some of the more disreputable present unable to resist the opportunity to check quality.
Having all taken a turn at filling the cask, it seemed appropriate that we all did our bit to ‘bang the bung’ and thereby dispatch our whisky to its long sleep.
The cask being filled and the bung well and truly ‘banged’ by all present, the company moved on to visit the Bond where our whisky will sleep until late 2030.
……… and so ended our visit to the Annandale Distillery. We were due at the Globe Inn, Dumfries for lunch over half an hour before the bus left the distillery but, by that time, such matters were deemed to be of little relevance. At the Globe, described by Burns as his “favourite howff”, the group enjoyed lunch in the private dining room before being guided through Burns’ rooms.
Poor Rabbie ! As can be seen below, his chair had to suffer all manner of stress as, one after other, our cronies tried it out to see if it might enhance their singing or recitations. No noticeable improvements were recorded.
Club secretary, Alan Crilly, was unable to join us on the expedition due to illness. It was Alan, on a slow train journey home from England, who read the pages of our website, realised our 150th anniversary was in 2031, then had the brainwave that a cask of whisky was just what we needed. How right he was !
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We left the Globe about 4:30pm for the drive back to Balerno. A successful and enjoyable day was had by all.
The Club Committee have decided to sell 100 shares of our cask to Club Members at a cost of £80 per share. Each share entitles its owner to two bottles of our whisky which will be bottled at cask strength. This figure has been set for the Club to break even after bottling costs and taxes are paid in 2030 with a balance of about 30 bottles becoming the property of the Club after all shareholders have been supplied.
It’s anticipated that Club Members will visit the distillery several times over the next few years to ensure our sleeping cask is being cared for. Any shareholders interested in joining such future visits are asked to let the club committee know of their interest.