Scottish Folklore Series: Boobrie

The Final Chapter Has Arrived

It’s hard to believe that the time has come to close the last chapter of Cask 88 Scottish Folklore Series, a collection of six unique single cask expressions which each embody a different Scottish legend of old. This series of distinct bottles is designed to bond the stories of Scotland’s unique history with the very finest single malts.

The result is a fantastic collection of some of the finest Scottish whiskies, selected to represent the breadth and depth of Scotland’s world renowned culture and heritage, while playing a part in ensuring these enchanting myths and folktales endure for generations to come. We head to the Kintyre peninsula for our final release, home of Campbeltown and the superlative Springbank distillery. If you’re near the water and hear the sound of a bellowing bull – look to the skies: you may catch a glimpse of the elusive and terrifying Boobrie.

Cask 88 – The Team Behind The Bottle

We at Cask 88, as the home of rare and old whisky, take seriously our responsibility to promote Scottish whisky internationally. We don’t just deal in casks and bottles of exquisite whisky from the most prestigious distilleries in Scotland, we want to embody everything that is unique and magical about the industry and country we work in.

At its heart, the whisky industry is inextricably linked to time itself. No one can distil a vintage whisky in an afternoon; only time can create that. It is this relationship with time and place which is truly unique to the whisky industry. Over time, this exciting industry creates its own history and folklore, something we want to share with everyone who loves old and rare whisky as much as we do.

The Mull of Kintyre

The Kintyre peninsulain the county of Argyll extends southwards along the west coast of Scotland – a natural sea wall that keeps the waters of the Clyde firth calm. Campbeltown nestles about halfway up the east coast of the peninsula, the peaceful waters of its harbour a boon to the former trade lanes of the steam age.

At the turn of the 20th century, Campbeltown was Scotland’s prime location for whisky distillation, with 34 distilleries crammed into the tiny burgh, supplied with all they needed by the ships that brought ingredients and fuel into the harbour, and carried Campbeltown’s whiskies away across the world’s oceans. Clearly, none of these convoys carried anything of any interest to the Boobrie, as there are no recorded incidents of Boobrie attack on any ships that carried whisky.

Springbank distillery is a darling in the whisky world – they stubbornly make their whisky the old-fashioned way and will not be hurried. Every so often, to shake things up, they produce an entirely unpeated spirit which they distil a third time for extra smoothness. It’s a cask of this triple distilled malt whisky, born in the year 2000, that we present as the 6th in the Scottish Folklore Series. In addition to finding such a rare cask, we feel doubly lucky: If the Boobrie had had any interest in fine single cask Scotch whisky, it would never have let this cask mature for 21 years undisturbed. Its loss is your gain!

Springbank Single Cask – A Triple Distilled Haven

A single cask of 21 year old whiskytriple distilled at Springbank distillery was chosen to become the sixth release in the Cask 88 Scottish Folklore Series and represent the Boobrie of Argyll. The whisky has spent all of its 21 years in an ex-bourbon hogshead. The triple distillation renders the whisky lighter and softer than its double distilled cousin, and the absence of peat allows the subtler flavours to sing more clearly.

This whisky is something of an ambush predator in itself, in that it greets you with a quick rush of fruity and floral sweetness which then eases back to become a gentler, more nutty fragrance. This is surely a whisky for those calm, sunny days that turn the West Coast of Scotland into a paradise.

Beautiful Design

The sixth release in the Scottish Folklore series continues, and slightly subverts, the award winning style that has captivated whisky lovers with artistic interpretations of each mythical creature that are unlike any other you’ve seen before. The Boobrie on the bottle is a peculiar bird in the extreme – especially since it wears hints of the other creatures it has the power to shapeshift into. On its head it wears the horns of a bull, its neck shows the beginnings of a horse’s mane, and the tail is that of a particularly hideous insect. Graceful it may not be, but the Boobrie is not a creature to be trifled with.

Its clawed and webbed feet grasp the skull of its latest meal as it spreads its vast wings and puffs out its chest – confident in its position at the top of the food chain. Behind it is a bed of sea wrack, the ever present adornment of coastal Argyll. The artist Hannah Fleetwood had a peculiar brief for this final Folklore bottle – but we think she’s rounded out the Folklore series in style.