Not sure if this topic has been written about before but curious if anybody has done it.
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It was written about briefly when you started the same thread in the Beer & Spirits Forum in 2021. 
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Such is the onset of old timers disease. Will try looking for it again 
The upshot is that it’s more burdensome and difficult than you think, and the quality of spirits offered now is usually low while the price is high.
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Found it. Just received an interesting offer but ten minutes later received a far more interesting offer of very old Pomerol. Going with that.
BIL and a friend did it about 30 years ago at Springbank and bottled it at 21 years. Expensive process but the whiskey is very good. Sure wish he’d give/sell me a bottle.
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21 year cask strength Springbank of my own is the dream. They were certainly way ahead of the hype train 30 years ago!
That’s truly impressive. I would make it my life’s mission to acquire a few bottles.
When I started drinking whisky in the mid-2000s, the current boom was still a year or two away. Back then, Arran was selling casks for ~£8,000, plus (reasonable, IIRC) yearly storage and eventual bottling fees. I remember thinking how attainable that was, even at my then-academic’s salary!
Flash forward, and single-cask bottlings from Arran (and many more well-known distilleries) have become thin on the ground. And I’ve heard many stories about distilleries buying back casks they had sold to private collectors. Times have certainly changed.
Arran still does it with their new distillery. Details can be found here: Buy a Whisky Cask from Lochranza Distillery | Arran Whisky
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Ooh, I had no idea! Thanks.
I still wish indie single casks of Arran were more readily available than they used to be.
We bottled our first cask of Springbank (32 years old, Bourbon cask, from Murray McDavid) in 1999 and since bottled casks of Ardbeg 29, Brora 30, Port Ellen 22, Laphroaig 18, and Benriach 23.
Our bottling are listed on Whiskybase:
The first three bottlings (Springbank, Ardbeg, and Brora) were extraordinary. The other three were not up to the quality of the first three and while good, are not great in my opinion (except for Port Ellen, which I do not like at all). The quality of the casks we tasted declined precipitously after we bottled Brora in 2003, 20 years ago, and has continued to decline since. Our Benriach was the best of the post 2003 bottlings only because we had someone on the inside of the distillery directing good casks our way.
When we started buying casks (we also bought some blood tubs from Springbank and Bruichladdich), there was little non-commercial competition and we had personal connections with the independent bottlers from whom we purchased casks (Murray McDavid, OMC/Douglas Laine) or the distilleries themselves. As the value and scarcity of good casks rose, the IBs pretty quickly figured out that it was much more profitable to bottle the good casks themselves and the whiskies we’ve sampled since have been, frankly, subpar to awful.
While tasting samples from many dozens of casks since 2009, we have not found one that we considered worth buying.
As I haven’t been involved in importation since our last cask in 2009, I’ll leave the description of that migraine to Sarah and others who have done so since and have their own licenses.
The process was fun, especially for the first three, when the samples were mostly great and making a choice was difficult. And buyer beware: I’m not convinced that the samples we chose were always the whiskies we received. Specifically our Ardbeg, the great Ardbeggeddon, which I believe is from a different and better cask than what we chose (the Laing Bros were generally a bit disorganized at that time and we managed everything with that bottling solely from the US). It is a minefield that has only become worse according to the merchants I know who do this stuff on a continuing basis. So be cautious and only work with sources you trust, whether brokers, IBs, or distilleries.
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I second Mark’s comments. It’s very sad, the decline in quality casks available. What we are bottling for sale now are casks we bought many years ago and have been patiently monitoring. We are pretty excited about them, and about some upcoming casks we bought as new make and have overseen from the start. But I couldn’t see doing this for fun at this point.
To add, it’s not just the spirit that is questionable now, the barrels themselves are mostly crap. Getting real, serious sherry casks, for instance, now is extremely difficult and expensive.
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Was the Springbank selection you listed bottled at cask strength? If diluted, did you have a choice, or did the IB require it?
I would be shocked if much of anyone who buys casks for personal consumption bottling doesn’t bottle at cask strength.
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What do you think has changed, and what can make such a difference in quality of one cask vs another from a particular distiller?
To your second question, every cask is a living thing. We all know that the barrels in which new wine resides impart structure, taste, texture, aromas - same with whisky, only to a much greater degree because the spirit spends so much longer in the barrel. There is huge variation in just the barrels themselves, never mind variations in distilling, which can change over time - what kind of wood, quality of construction, previous use (bourbon, sherry, etc.) and whether it’s a refill or just seasoned or what have you, size of barrel, temperature of storage, rate of air transfer, final alcohol level, time in barrel…the list goes on and on.
When you think about it, it’s more astonishing that master blenders are able to create the consistent, high quality product that they do, decade after decade.
Your first question is a longer answer, and Mark knows a lot more about it than I do.
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Interesting that you think the barrel is almost more important than the barley source/quality, and all the steps that come before barreling.
I don’t, but you asked about differences at the same distillery.
Our Springbank cask was bottled at 45.8%, cask strength at 31/32 years.
There is a story. We knew Gordon Wright well when he was the marketing director at Springbank and after as the frontman for Murray McDavid. Gordon agreed to sell us this cask, but some of our group were reluctant to pay $90/btl delivered for an experiment, so we split the cask with Murray McDavid and our half rendered 72 bottles of which I bought a dozen and have one bottle remaining. The ATF process took forever, and MM required us to use the gonif Alan Shayne, the then owner of the US franchise of the SMWS and MM’s importer, to process the paperwork. It took so long that MM dumped and bottled its half of the cask before the 32nd birthday of the whisky and the MM bottling was sold and can still be found at auction sites as a 31-year-old. Same whisky, same cask, bottled several months earlier and therefore a year younger in whisky age.
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I’ve tasted more bottles than I care to recount of good whisky ruined by barrel. Start with everything the Macallan has bottled and sold since the 1980 release of the 18-year-old. They formerly had the best access to the best sherry casks in the world. No longer true and it is obvious in their whiskies. HP has bottled oceans of fine spirit ruined by lousy sherry casks; especially any 18-year-old that spent time in sherry. The list, unfortunately, is endless. I’m sure Sarah and Jonathan have their own list of horrors.
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