Balvenie’s Tun 1509 #1 replaces Tun 1401 and does it more than justice.

It was 1892 in Dufftown, Speyside, the picturesque hometown of the famous William Grant of William Grant & Sons when Grant built the Balvenie Distillery. Only a year later, the first Whisky distillation took place. Still standing at the same place in the Scottish Highlands today, not much has changed. (Ah, don’t you just love it when good things stay the same.) Balvenie is still one of a handful of distilleries in Scotland to grow its own barley, use traditional floor maltings and even keep a team of coopers on site to take care of their copper stills. The duck pond, the pagoda and the Warehouse 24, holding Balvenie’s rarest and most precious treasures, are also still very much around. And last but not least, Malt Master David C. Stewart MBE, one of the industry most experienced experts who joined Balvenie in 1962 at 17, is still overseeing the production of the most hand-crafted of Single Malts.

For the Tun range, launched in 2010, David C. Stewart selects his favorite rare casks from the oldest warehouses and marries them in a, yep, tun. Batch No. 1 of the Balvenie Tun 1509 replaced Tun 1401 in 2014 after 9 excellent, but very limited batches of the latter were released. DCS hand-picked 42 of the finest Single Malt casks. 35 traditional American oak barrels and 7 European oak Sherry butts were transferred to Tun 1509, sitting in the iconic Warehouse 24 for several months. This rare marrying process allows all 42 of Balvenie precious Single Malt Whisky casks to come out the other side of this marriage even better than they were going in. And isn’t that the point of marriage?

Smartass Corner:
MBE stands for the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, which is a British order of chivalry, rewarding contributions to the arts and sciences among others.