We’re delighted to announce the imminent arrival of Periodical, the latest wheeze from North Star Spirits, one of Scotland’s most exciting new wave independent bottlers of single malt whisky.
Along with the incoming latest batch of their excellent single cask releases, North Star will shortly be debuting the first bottling of their newest series of whiskies. Periodical has a very vintage-style aesthetic, is credited to ‘Glagow Spirit Merchants Croucher & Co.’ and comes in an old-style apothecary flask-type bottle and label. As the name implies, Periodical will be an occasional release alongside North Star’s regular lineup.
The reasons for the name and the irregularity of future Periodical releases are tied together: the Periodical series is North Star’s ingenious solution to a common issue facing indie bottlers - what to do with a cask that hasn’t got very much liquid in it?
These casks may be low-yielding for various reasons - they might be leftovers from private bottlings where customers only wanted a small number of bottles, they may be from particularly small or leaky barrels or they may just have been victims of thirsty angels who took more than their fair share. North Star’s boss Iain Croucher’s solution is to bottle them as Periodical releases: in smaller bottles, slightly below cask strength and at a great value price.
In practice this means that Croucher & Co.’s Periodical bottles, though appearing on an irregular basis, will all share the following characteristics:
- They will be in 50cl bottles
- The strength will be 50%
- The price will be under £50
- They will only be available in the UK
Can’t say fairer than that, and we reckon this is a concept with great potential.
The first Periodical is due on our virtual shelves in the near future and it sounds like a belter. Periodical #1 is a 12-year-old single malt whisky from An Orkney Distillery (nudge nudge), has yielded 424 50cl bottles at 50% (it's the leftovers from a large refill puncheon cask apparently) and should retail around £40. We have high hopes for this one, and can’t wait to see what further gems the Periodical series will bring in the future.