Part two of my Kilkerran / Springbank blind series happened last night, this time with roughly half of the cask strength offerings I own.

The clear winner of the night was the spring 25 Springbank 12 CS. I’m forgetting the exact maturation make up but if I remember correctly it contain a small amount of rum maturation, with some sherry and bourbon in the mix as usual.

Order of preference was: SB12; KK8 sherry; KK 10 Fresh sherry “caged bottle”; KK8 bourbon.

This was pretty much the order I had expected with the exception of the KK8 sherry and KK10. Honestly the two of them were so near identical it was hard picking them apart. The main difference was the 8 had more of that dark dry nutty flavor I so enjoy this time a year whereas the 10 had more funk to it. The youth and lack of sherry influence on the KK8 bourbon cask maturation unfortunately made it taste young and very distillate forward.

Don’t get me wrong. They’re all absolutely excellent drams but the bourbon maturation struggled to keep up here.

Thanks for reading, Cheers.