Maltandoak.com has learned of the imminent release of the third ‘Whisky of Mass Destruction’ – The Yellow Submarine – from Bruichladdich . This will be a 25 year old 1991 vintage, sherry matured in Rioja casks between 1991 and 2006, then finished in Spanish Oak red wine casks until 2016. This will be officially released for the Bruichladdich shop and website only on the 22nd.
Photo Credit: whisky-onlineauctions.com
The previous edition was released in 2016, and the story of it was told by the late beloved Carl Reavey on the Bruichladdich website:
The story of the Yellow Submarine has been full of character and characters right from the beginning. It started with our friend ‘Demolition Dave’ helping Duncan McGillivray and his gang to demolish the old Inverleven distillery – buying up all the old equipment for scrap and loading it onto barges on the Clyde. All so Duncan had some spares to keep Bruichladdich running in the days of No Money. As this odd flotilla was being towed round the Mull of Kintyre and up to Islay, Laddie MD Mark Reynier received an email from the Defence Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) in the USA who had been monitoring distillery webcams on the grounds that our processes could have been ‘tweaked’ to produce the dreaded WMD. ‘Weapons of Mass Destruction’.
Never one to allow the opportunity for a good story to pass him by, or to get his beloved distillery in the news, Reynier embellished the tale, which soon grew to involve spies and the CIA and visits by weapons inspectors. All of which made great headline-grabbing copy in the febrile media atmosphere then prevailing around WMD.
One of the stills from Inverleven was dutifully set up outside the old Victorian buildings, and became an iconic sight, with a pair of Duncan’s old wellie boots sticking out of the top to represent those weapons inspectors searching for dangerous chemicals deep in its copper bottomed interior.
A special bottling was commissioned (of course) and dubbed the ‘Whisky of Mass Distinction’ (geddit?) and much hilarity ensued. At least among the Laddies, the rest of the whisky industry having long since given up on the noisily irreverent rebels.