Port wine traces its origins to the 17th Century. English merchants, looking for alternatives to French wine during trade disputes, began to import Portuguese wine, adding Brandy to fortify the wine to prevent spoiling and cater to British tastes. These empty port casks went on to be used for whisky storage and this practice is still imparting wondrous flavours in new Scotch made today.
The Dalmore Cask Curation Series: The Port Edition - focuses on Dalmore’s exclusive partnership with one of the oldest and world-leading port wine producers Graham’s.
Founded in 1820 by two Scottish families, Graham’s is located in the Douro Valley of Northern Portugal in Porto - the oldest demarcated wine region in the world. Still using traditional techniques of hand-harvesting and treading of grapes, Graham’s are known for their rich, concentrated tannic structure with a house style of floral and berry flavours. To celebrate the long-standing partnership, three port casks (known as port pipes) that held Single Harvest Tawny Port were hand-selected to represent some of the finest years in port production, 1997, 1994 and 1952. These post pipes were used to cask finish three highly aged Dalmore whiskies.
Bottle No.1 - A 27-year-old Dalmore Single Malt Scotch whisky finished in a Graham’s 1997 single harvest tawny port pipe
Bottle No.2 - A 30-year-old Dalmore Single Malt Scotch whisky finished in a Graham’s 1994 single harvest tawny port pipe
Bottle No.3 - A 43-year-old Dalmore Single Malt Scotch whisky finished in a Graham’s 1952 single harvest tawny port pipe
The Dalmore bottle, also designed by Burgess Studio, is finished with a solid silver stopper and collar inlaid with foiled Saffiano leather. Each round ‘hat box’ style presentation case is wrapped by Italian luggage makers in ‘Port Green’ Saffiano leather with a matching handle and luggage tag, which contains the whisky information. The case acts as both a carry case and display plinth for the trio of bottles. An accompanying book documents the history and journey of the casks and the partnership of these two great houses. Miniature sets were created as tasting kits containing three 5cl bottles.
View the first release, The Sherry Edition, here.