I’m pretty new to this forum but from what I’ve read by now there’s a lot of users who love Hampden Estate and have great knowledge of both original bottlings and independent bottlings.
The SMWS (Scotch Malt Whisky Society) announced its April 2024 outturn and amongst some other outliers there is a 21YO Hampden Estate bottling. I’m not sure if it is allowed to post urls here so I just provide the specs:
Name: STILL CRAZY AFTER ALL THESE YEARS
Single cask no. R7.4
Distilled: 30/9/2000
Age: 21 years in refill ex-bourbon barrel
ABV: 54.7%
Release date: April 5, 2024
700ml
Tasting Notes:
An abundance, or even better an explosion, of esters centring mainly on strawberries either dowsed in vinegar or petrol with further aromas being marker pens, pear drops and peppermint oil, crazy! Absolutely huge neat like downing a woo-woo cocktail, made with cherry and peach flavoured vodka, lime juice, strawberry puree, cranberry juice and garnished with cherry laces. Add in mulled cider mince pies, rum stewed rhubarb and you’ve got the picture. Water and time can tame it somewhat, if that’s what you want, with sweeter notes of wagon wheel biscuits and pineapple wine being joined on the palate by peanut butter, teak oil and firelighters.
To me 137€ seems pretty reasonable for a 21YO single cask Hampden but what do you think? Are there independent bottlings with similar age and a better price tag or is this actually a good buy?
Seems like a good deal, no mention of the marque though. Could be a LROK or even better <>H or something like that.
I assume those bottles are not freely available but for a limited audience, hence the relatively good price compared to other IB recently.
For comparison: The Rum Cask brought a 2001 <>H Hampden for the Nürnberg fair earlier this year and that one came for 170€ for 0,5l bottle. So that one was way more expensive…
But price isnt everything, hopefully the quality is also in line with many of the other older Hampdens and this one isnt a negative outlier.
Thanks! So the marque is LROK and apparently this bottling was already part of at least one previous outturn. I don’t know if that’s because they couldn’t get rid of the bottles or if they’ve just put a few bottles aside…
And yes, SMWS bottlings are member-exclusive. I have an active membership and usually purchase 1 or 2 bottles every month, but in the April 2024 outturn, the rum actually looks more interesting than the whisky. There’s also two bottlings from DDL Guyana:
SARDINE RIDES A BIKE INTO A PICKLE
Single cask no. R2.22
61.7%
Distilled 25/4/2008
Aged 15 years in 2nd fill ex-bourbon barrel
100€
STICKY SPICE CAKE
Single cask no. R2.18
58.7%
Distilled 31/7/2004
Aged 18 years in 2nd fill ex-bourbon barrel
109€
This time I tried to find them in the RumX database but these two actually look like first-time releases.
not sure about it. I think, those who have tried it already, have done so at the Whisky Live in Paris up-front. Therefore, it might be a regular (first-time) release for the SMWS members…
OK that’s interesting! So out of the three rums from the April 2024 outturn, which one is actually the best value?
By the way if there’s a bottle that someone wants really bad, I can order a bottle in behalf of someone else or even do a bottle split. I try to get the most out of my membership and imo this includes sharing it with others if possible.
Not sure if the R2.18 is really from the new outturn. Just doing the maths on the distillation date and the age of the rum. Plus there is also a R2.22 which suggests that there are some releases in between.
Just a side note. Whether or not it really is new outturn does not matter. Prices seems reasonable.
