Enquire about
Cask Ownership
Reserve your own Lindores Abbey Whisky Cask and take up a very rare opportunity to own a piece of scotch whisky history!
Not only could you secure yourself a personal supply of scotch whisky, a cask could also be a unique gift to mark a special occasion for an individual, business or organisation.
Cask Ownership
UNIQUE | IMMERSIVE | BESPOKE
We are rightly proud of our award-winning New Make Spirit, and as a small, family-run distillery, we delight in the freedom we have to work with this incredibly versatile spirit. It allows us to raise the bar in terms of exclusivity, obscurity and the sense of having something truly personal and unique to offer to our cask owners.
Our Cask Ownership experience is a chance to become an integral part of Lindores Abbey Distillery’s journey as the spirit flows once again at the Spiritual Home of Scotch Whisky. You will not only be able to choose your individual cask size and flavour profile, but you will also receive invitations to exclusive cask-owner events, such as our Cask Buyers Evenings. You are even welcome to visit your cask and chat with our in-house Cask Custodian about its progress. Ultimately, owners of Private Casks will have their own unique bottling of Lindores Abbey Distillery Single Malt Whisky, which can be personalised with your name, company logo, family crest etc.
PREMIUM RELEASES
Throughout the 2021 calendar year we will have five, exceptionally unique and very exciting releases. We are bringing our bespoke service right to you, under the hands of our dedicated cask specialist Elliot, who has been working very closely with suppliers from different countries to secure such releases. The idea of these exotic casks is to bring to life the versatility of the maturation journey. Not only are these casks of the rarer sort, but they will also give you options, do you want a long maturity for example, or a smashing single cask fit for consumption in 10 years? Do you like sweet, dry, or spicier flavours, casks with a full unique story to them – something more off-list?
Get in touch with Elliot our dedicated full-time Cask Custodian who can give you the best insight to what to buy and when.
CONTACT USSelecting your Cask
We’ve worked hard to establish relationships that enable us to source highly unique casks, and we now have an astonishing variety available. No two casks are truly the same, and we will work with you to create a tailor-made experience and find your perfect match.
Understandably costs will change depending on the cask you have selected and how much spirit it has been filled with, but we feel it’s important that you have some connection and input into this very important part of the maturation process. Throughout our past 3 years of production here at the Abbey we have filled well over 30 different cask types for ourselves and for the lucky private buyers.
This year we will continue offering extremely limited casks, which will only be available for a set period. If you’re after that perfect gift for someone, or that unique business rewarding cask to bottle for colleagues in the future, this is something worth looking out for.
Our core cask listing is available all year round, but some casks will be limited due to demand and popularity, so please fill out our enquiry form to find out more. Price start from £4000 (not including taxes, VAT, bottling, and warehousing costs).
from Cask Custodian Elliot Wynn Higgins
Cask Samples Taken From our Core 3 Lindores Casks To Gain a Basic Understanding of Lindores Spirit
STR ‘wine barrique’ Cask
This sample balances influences from both new and used oak to create a wonderful combination of rich stewed fruit, oak, dark chocolate and bitter orange sauce. Tasting this sample, we notice flavours that remind us to a rich spiced trifle, a mixture between demerara sugar and butter, shortbread and rich pepper. Adding water to this sample we noticed that the malt opens out with herbs, vine tomato and is mixed with sweet vanilla and a hint of caramel bar. The addition of water released a caramel flavour, shortbread and spiced toffee sauce.
Oloroso Sherry Butt
The Oloroso wine infused in the wood of this cask imparts some of the flavour and aroma of the wine to the whisky during the aging process. This sample shows sweet and citrus aromas like lime jam mixed with sweet red apple crumble and custard and the aroma of an apricot cheesecake. A wonderful taste of red berries, dark cherries and hint of roasted nuts. Adding water, the cask provides a herbal/grassy hint, with floral and meadow aromas coming through. The addition of water released a fragrant, aromatic and perfumed note which gave way to clove spice.
Bourbon Hogshead
This cask has a curious, subtle fresh cucumber aroma, with a citrus aroma that turns into sweet icing sugar. It is also slightly grassy with a hint of pears. A mixture of floral heather, this dram is sweet and mild – like caramel and toffee. Dig deeper and there is a lovely lemon meringue on a buttery pastry bake with a subtle nutmeg spice. The addition of water released an array of fruity aromas, such as pear, apricot, pineapple and banana. Underlying this we also detected delicious sweet Canadian maple syrup. The taste of this sample after adding water gave spicy notes like black pepper mixed with juicy strawberry, black forest, pears and citric lemon zest.
The Extras
As well as your Cask you will also receive:
- An official certificate of ownership
- Your name etched onto a wooden stave on the wall of our Visitor Centre
- The opportunity to come and fill your cask
- Advanced notification of any future special bottlings
- An invitation to all exclusive events we host for cask owners
Why invest in a
Whisky Cask
Many whisky fans buy a cask as an investment – for instance the Knight Frank Wealth Report 2019 revealed that investment in Scotch whisky is now seeing greater returns than classic cars, wine, jewellery, diamonds and watches. With bottles of Scotch whisky achieving more than $1M at auction in 2018, the potential for return in entire casks has never been stronger. Over the last 10 years, rare whisky has witnessed a 580% increase in value and Andrew Shirley, a Knight Frank partner says that;
“Nothing can be compared with whisky in terms of its profitability, it has proved its status as an alternative investment to oil and gold”
While this may be true, we have found that many more people buy casks for consumption. Often a group of friends or family club together to buy a cask, because they may want something to bottle for gifting in the future, perhaps to celebrate a marriage or the birth of a new baby. Others buy whisky casks because they are fascinated by its evolution, and love to follow the progress of the spirit as it matures.
And that’s part of the attraction: whisky in the cask goes on evolving in a way that bottled whisky does not. What’s more, every single cask that we fill is unique: we can fill two identical casks with the same spirit and put them in our warehouse for the same period of time, and they’ll still turn out slightly different. This is what makes buying whisky by the cask so fascinating.
Costs involved
Casks start from £4,000 – Not including the additional costs of Bottling, HMRC Duty and VAT.
As an example, the total cost of a 195-litre bourbon cask after 10 years of maturation at today’s rates would be (estimated in terms evaporation loses).
Initial cask price – £4,000.
HMRC Duty Payment at today’s rate on total alcohol remaining in the cask after 10 years maturation (after loses due to evaporation) – £2,540.
Bottling Costs – £1,100.
VAT applied to all of the above – £1,528.
Total Cost = £9,171.
Should you wish to keep your cask maturing with us longer than 10 years, there will be an annual fee applied to do this.
Corporate Cask Ownership
As an organisation or business you could take up the unique chance to purchase a whisky cask from our third full year of production and have it filled with Lindores spirit.
Perhaps your organisation has an event or anniversary coming up in the next few years and you want to remember it in a special way. You could mark that occasion with a bespoke bottle of whisky for your selected guests.
Alternatively, if you are looking to reward your customers, partners or colleagues and want to find a special way to acknowledge their efforts, what better gift than a bottled whisky from your organisation?
Ultimately, as Corporate owners of your own cask, you would have your own unique bottling of Lindores Abbey Distillery Single Malt Whisky, which can be personalised with your organisations name and company logo.
The bottles can be branded and labelled to your specifications, when the whisky is ready.
You could then choose to keep these bottles as Corporate gifts, incentives or you could choose to retail them yourselves.
The possibilities are endless.
Find out moreEnquire now
We could go on but believe the best placed person to discuss this fantastic opportunity with is our Cask Custodian Elliot, after all he is the person who will be nurturing your spirit and cask for the next 10 years.
If you would like to find out more, please complete the form below with your details and Elliot will be in touch very soon.
