The Arran 11yo 2008-2017 Trebbiano Casks

24 March 2018

We’ve tasted a lot of wine cask maturations lately, and we like them. They offer some variety in the whisky landscape.

We own mostly red wine maturations, but then we came across this beauty, I had to buy it. This is a special release from Arran, bottled for the Netherlands. This whisky matured on Trebbiano white wine casks, for a full 11 years, then bottled at cask strength. The Trebbiano grape is mainly found in Italy and France.

Tasting notes

Colour

The colour is surprisingly red, when you add water, it becomes more yellow and very cloudy. That’s Arran doing the right thing: natural colour and non chill filtering.

Nose

On the nose, it’s a bouquet of vanilla, cherry blossom, citrus fruits and a some faint tobacco leaves. And if you wait half an hour, there’s a cooked meat aroma to it, very moreish!

Palate

The palate is light, fruity and offers mostly red fruits. A taste of soaked white raisins.

Finish

The finish first resembles flavours of champaign, its sweet and sour at the same time, a small bitter note as well. But then it goes savoury, salty and sweet, like your grandma is in the kitchen, cooking the finest meat. Incredible!

Overall, it’s a very nice, fresh and fruity whisky, with the savoury hints as a surprising bonus. Considering the price of 50 euro, it’s a no brainer. We expected a little bit more cask influence at first, but at half the bottle, things opened up quite nicely.

What experience do you have with white wine maturations? And what would you recommend us to try?