American Classic 16

The latest bottling - a member of the Bruichladdich 16s – is an all American Classic. A single malt with French royal family and revolutionary war connections. The sixteen year old Bruichladdich is aged exclusively in America oak Bourbon barrels.

Redundant bourbon barrels represent about 97% of casks used for maturing Scotch whisky. Since Prohibition ended in 1933, the US law states these casks can be used just once before being sold - to an eager Scottish whisky market.

These casks are made from Quercus Alba, white oak, also known as American Oak from the Ozark mountains of Missouri and Kentucky. Tyloses, or celluar growths, make this oak more water-tight meaning it can be machine-worked, use thinner staves, reducing coopering costs.

The Classic Bourbon 16 makes a great contrast to our French oak “First Growth” series of 16 year olds. With this bottling which we expect to run until about 2011 we wanted to reaffirm the American connection: Prohibition changed the flavour of Scotch Whisky for a century.

Scotch and American whiskies are historically linked. It’s a symbiotic cycle: we gave them distilling, so they can sell us cheap casks. Immigrant Scots started distilling, mainly for domestic purposes, in the US shortly after the American War of Independence when they settled in Kentucky, in a newly established (county of Bourbon.

It was named Bourbon in 1785 in homage to the French royal family, in recognition of their help in the battle against the English. Just four years later, in 1889, the French Revolution started. America’s national spirit was nearly called Napoleon! I wonder what the Cognac boys would have had to say about that.

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Notes to Editors

UK distribution: Malcolm Cowen  RRP+/-£40

Export sales: andrew@bruichladdich.com

The American Classic 16 bottling is forecast to run until 2011

Prohibition: The Volstead Act mandated in the Eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution lasted from 1920 to 1933, during which the sale, manufacture, and transportation of alcohol was banned.

Bourbon is a US made style of whiskey distilled mainly from maize - there is no geographical area, it is a generic name.

Early American pioneers, Scots and Ulster Scots, established distilling west of the Allegheny Mountains after the American War of Independence 1775–1783. The French Revolution 1789 - 1799

Bourbon County, established in 1785, was originally a quarter of today’s Kentucky State in area. Now shrunk to just one county (291 Square miles) out of 120 counties.

A resolution of the U.S. Congress in 1964 declared bourbon to be a "distinctive product of the United States."

Confusingly, Quercus Alba is now grown in Southern Europe and is used by many European wine makers including Sherry producers.