* Wood
This is because wood is an organic material and the 26 staves of white oak wood that make up a typical ex-bourbon cask all have various different grain patterns. You’ll have noticed the dark versus light grain in a piece of wood right?

You will have noticed that pine wood is mainly white with occasional slivers of brown. Oak is overall more brown with tiny threads of white throughout. The different shades of wood contain different amounts of naturally-occuring organic compounds. These compounds interact with the whiskey spirit as it matures in the cask. High quality, fresh, first-fill white oak casks give the best results.

* Environment
Various environmental influences such as temperature, pressure and humidity all combine to create a unique “micro climate” in each cask. These variations all influence how the end whiskey interacts with the wood compounds and its environment, directly affecting how it develops and tastes. Two identical casks filled one after the other can have slight differences in flavour upon final maturation. If you start off with high quality whiskey spirit and mature it carefully in high quality fresh wood, you’ll have a very unique premium whiskey with its own individual flavour personality, just like its owner!

* Protecting the flavour
This is why single casks of whiskey are considered the purest expression of a distillery and are so highly desired, particularly when bottled at a higher strength of 46% ABV or more. An ABV of 46% means the whiskey can be bottled without chill filtration. At 46% ABV, the tiny particles of naturally-occurring flavour compounds in the whiskey remain soluble. If you water the whiskey down to say 40% and place the bottle in a cold environment, those compounds will form structures which catch the light and make the whiskey look hazy or cloudy. Commercial brands water the ABV down to 40% but use chill filtering so the whiskey still looks nice and clear and it also leaves the distillery with more whiskey. However, chill filtering also strips away some of the natural flavour of the whiskey. We don't chill filter your whiskey. It retains all that flavour that the Master Distiller and his team worked hard to create.