The story of a dream about a dram

Click on the title for whisky specifications

Newsflash: The 12 year old Bruadaradh has been bottled.

Newsflash: Unique -Two ages from the same cask: 9 & 12 years

Many a whisky enthousiast has dreamt of owning a cask of whisky, slowly maturing under the relentless force of the Scottish elements. I was no different. At the end of the 90's I started scouring the web for any cask offers. In 1999 I visited Islay for the first time. An island that litterly breathes whisky. The proprietor of our youth hostel informed us that we were actually going to spend the night under the roof of an old Distillery. The distillery in question was: Lochindaal in the village of Port Charlotte and established in year 1829. This was clearly a mothballed distillery. None of the old buildings were still in use for the Whisky business. I slept well that night. On our way to the village of Port Charlotte we passed an other mothballed Distillery: Bruichladdich. The closed gates were a sad reminder that this Distillery had been closed by Jim Beam in 1994. Then in 2000 a miracle occured: a group of private investors decided to buy the old distillery. They were led by Mark Reynier. Buying the place had emptied the coffers substantially so a cask owner plan was setup. The public could buy a cask. At the time I was following several forums and that brought the cask offer to my attention. I immediately informed some of my friends to find out if we could buy a cask together. Whisky is still a social affair, but allas....the time was not right.

Time went by and during the last days of 2009 i noticed a new cask offer on the Bruichladdich website. It was exactly what I wanted: freshly distilled spirit (on the 1st of September of that same year) filled into a fresh Bourbon barrel with a peatyness of 50 PPM. This time I would not ask friends...but just buy it. Even though I knew my wife would agree on the buy, I clearly remember ringing her at her work at "In de Wildeman" to tell her I was just one click away of the historic moment of buying a cask of whisky. My initention was greeted with cheers and the final click was made.

After a year some whisky loving friends joined the long wait too. So all's well that ends well.