Couvreur is back!
Many of you have been asking for the French Scotch in the angular bottles, and they are back.
They are the whiskies I hope do not get picked up on the radar of those who have inflated the prices of bourbon, among other things. They are still an amazing value and are truly whiskies for wine drinkers, with nuance and balance to match the soothing richness.
The Couvreur line of whiskies, in essence, is Scotch that is aged in Burgundy in old Sherry casks. This is a unique approach that was set up by the late Michel Couvreur, a Belgian-born Scotch broker who began collecting rare old Sherry butts in Spain that are prized for aging Scotch. He then built a cellar in Burgundy to merge his barrel collection with his highly tuned skills in finding exceptional raw whisky bases in Scotland.
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Determined to fight against modernization and cost-cutting the in Scotch industry, Couvreur went about saving details of traditional Scotch production that were going by the wayside. He became an expert on cereals, heirloom grains, and tracking down old, rare, expensive sherry butts in Spain that took immeasurable amounts of time and significant money. In the 1970s he started to dig the beginnings of a labyrinthine cellar in the hills of Burgundy. He aged whisky from Scotland in hard-to-find barrels from the Sherry region of Spain.
The barrels were worth the hunt because Courvreur believed that the quality of what had been in the barrel—usually sherry but even Vin Jaune—was responsible for 90% of the success of a whisky later aged in that same barrel. So it's no wonder most of the people I've run across who know Couvreur work in the wine industry. On top of what I described above, there's the long-term aging, obsessively tasting and blending before bottling, so that each whisky has a sense of balance and elegance that is superior to anything I've come across. The layers unfold slowly and express a deep range of flavors, though none of them ever seem to dominate and disrupt the harmony.
The barrels were worth the hunt because Courvreur believed that the quality of what had been in the barrel—usually sherry but even Vin Jaune—was responsible for 90% of the success of a whisky later aged in that same barrel. So it's no wonder most of the people I've run across who know Couvreur work in the wine industry. On top of what I described above, there's the long-term aging, obsessively tasting and blending before bottling, so that each whisky has a sense of balance and elegance that is superior to anything I've come across. The layers unfold slowly and express a deep range of flavors, though none of them ever seem to dominate and disrupt the harmony.
Gift it to yourself, you might need it this December. Or if you're feeling generous gift it to a loved one instead.
Cheers,
Jonathan Kemp
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