Independent but not alone – whisky made to share
The pitch for both of Seb Woolf’s brands is fairly similar and boils down to: good whisky is out there, and people should be able to drink it, not lose it to the shelves of collectors or flippers. This is a mentality I can get behind; gatekeeping and forecasting don’t exactly lead to exploration and enjoyment for the many. This ideal feeds into the naming of Artful Dodger, Seb’s first brand in 2018, when he started looking at consumer retail rather than the trading behind the scenes where he had been focused: a take from the rich to give to the poor type thing (yes, I know that’s a different folk hero). Moving on to 2021, Seb is able to diversify even more with the opening of Cut Your Wolf Loose in Brighton, a bar where everyone is welcome, and whisky is fun and available, not seen as for the stuffy and pretentious. The walls are for art, to be enhanced by guests – the seats wouldn’t look out of place on an old bus or train – the whole vibe is relaxed and modern-thinking. The venue is also the home of Seb’s second brand, also called Cut Your Wolf Loose, and driven by the same ethos as the bar and Artful Dodger before it, with the art for each release made by a different street artist.
I met Seb and Hugo at Brighton Whisky Weekend earlier this summer, where they had helped organise the event, and were holding down a stand at the festival exhibition pouring people their whiskies. I sampled some of what they were offering, and had a chat about whisky and clubs and bars. Within the next few days we’d exchanged emails and were talking about getting Hugo up to Cambridge to introduce more of its wonderful people to these wonderful whiskies. By the time we got to the finer points of the line-up, I asked Hugo about which whiskies he’d be bringing, assuming we’d get a range from both Artful Dodger and Cut Your Wolf Loose. It turns out that’s not something Hugo regularly does, normally focusing on only one brand at a time, but he was up for it and excited about presenting these whiskies in a new way.
The Whisky Spirits
(Click on the images to buy a bottle)
CYWL – Irish 15yo
Irish Single Malt Whiskey – 56.9%
There’s quite a bit of story around this bottling from an (as labelled) undisclosed Irish distillery. But I’ll start by saying that it was a wonderful opener, and despite being quite a high ABV (certainly for a first whisky), it was delicate and drinkable.
I shan’t tell all of the story that Hugo shared behind this whisky, so that anyone else reading this and seeking out the next CYWL tasting event doesn’t have everything spoiled, but there is one unusual element I’ll share. When this bourbon hogshead, full of Irish single malt, was shipped over to Scotland and to the Woolf Drinks warehousing, HMRC got word and pointed out that you can’t age Irish whiskey in Scotland. They cordoned it off and threatened to pour it all away! In the end, it was transferred over to a plastic IBC (those square caged plastic tanks you might have seen) and rested until the right time to bottle it arrived. Hence, the presence of a disgorging date on the label and the gap until bottling; no aging took place in that time, so no laws were ultimately broken!
Notes: 👃🏻Cereal, crackers, hobnobs, lemon, peach, sherbet 👄Peppery, milk + white chocolate, toffee cereal, banana.
AD – Caperdonich 29yo
Single Malt Scotch Whisky – 58.7%
For the second time in as many tastings, I have been able to provide a truly old, gem of a whisky on the line-up. The first was a lottery-drawn 27 year old, and this is a 29 year old from a lost distillery, very kindly included by Hugo. Caperdonich is not a well known distillery, and has been gone since 2002 (demolished in 2011), but its stills live on, with one pair installed at the Belgian Owl Distillery in 2013 (now itself under liquidation), and the other refurbished (along with the mash run) and sold to Falkirk Distillery in 2020.
The cask that this whisky was bottled from is a perfect example of the Artful Dodger credo: a distillery whose whisky gets meaningfully rarer every time a bottle opens, let alone when a cask gets disgorged, bought by the team, and filled into their standard 50cl bottles (so it can reach even more people). And then kindly selected and brought by Hugo for our tasting.
It went down very well, with lots more fruit and weight than I’m familiar with a bourbon cask imparting. The strength too; firstly, it didn’t drink like it was nearly 60%, but secondly, it’s quite impressive that it is that strong considering the age. It must have been a very well-coopered cask, or kept low in the warehouses it has spent its time.
Notes: 👃🏻Creamy milk bottle sweets, orange, peppery lime, strawberry laces, pastrami 👄Wood polish, PX, green citrus, salty toffee, almond, walnut, little wood pepper, bready sponge.
CYWL – Deanston 12yo
Single Malt Scotch Whisky – 55.8%
Whilst the Artful Dodger artwork remains fairly consistent between bottles, the Cut Your Wolf Loose labels are completely new and unique artworks for each expression. Often the street artists who take the commission are given some guidance about what their piece is going to get slapped on, things to expect from the flavour, or iconography to leave out, for example. With this Deanston, bottled in 2024, it was the first time one of the artists had actually tried the whisky before creating the art. So what we see here is a representation of how artist Matt Dosa experienced the whisky.
Matured in refill hogsheads, the typically waxy and full-bodied Deanston spirit had some wood to chew on for nearly 12 years, before a resounding 8 month finish in a fresh moscatel pipe. The official notes don’t quite reflect how I encountered the red fruit and sweetness, picking up more of the bready spice. Either way, it’s a very well-crafted whisky
Notes: 👃🏻Jam doughnut, fruit bubblegum, custard tart, chopped nuts 👄Dusty fruit, jelly on toast, jam rolypoly, burnt sugar, radish, apple.
AD – Craigellachie 18yo
Single Malt Scotch Whisky – 54.4%
I haven’t scrawled too much of the backstory and patter around this whisky in my notes of the night; for whatever reason that might be, it’s not because I was not interested or captivated by this whisky. I like Craigellachie – it’s one of the first handful of distilleries I remember trying something from, and it is so memorable because of the unusual notes I discerned. So when I see Craigellachie on a shelf or a website, I often toy with the idea of including it in my night or lineup.
Craigellachie is one of the vanishingly small number of Scottish distilleries that use worm tubs to cool their distillate. I’ve spoken about these before, and essentially they allow rapid cooling with little copper contact, which can lead to heavier, meatier whiskies. Of course, you can tweak your production processes at all sorts of points to combat this, or recreate it, but Craigellachie is proud of their spirit and its origins (worm tubs are mentioned in the second sentence of real text on their homepage).
Why is this an Artful Dodger release? Well, I can only assume that it’s because it’s a great cask of well-aged whisky, shared with us at a good price in the bottle. OB Craigellachie 17 retails at a similar price per ml, but that’s a marriage of bourbon and sherry, and at a chunk lower ABV, making this AD expression a story of one cask and the distillery’s character itself.
Notes: 👃🏻Werther’s Originals, grapefruit, melon, pineapple, salty cheesy crackers👄Industrial, pennies, vanilla, herbal, nectarine.
CYWL – Highwayman 3yo
Australian Single Malt Whisky – 54.4%
Hugo was very excited to share this bottle with us and see what we thought about it. I think if I’d left out the information from the tasting mat for this, he’d have been very happy for people to try it blind and allow them to form their opinions based on the spirit, not the stats. This is a 3 year old Australian whisky from the Highwayman Distillery, matured for that short time in a first-fill bourbon cask.
There’s a serious depth of colour and flavour here that I think, first of all, would have tricked some blind tasters. Secondly, if we were getting into guessing what cask was used: the notes I got, and the official notes, again as with the Caperdonich albeit at a totally different end of the age spectrum, don’t correspond to what I’d expect from a first-fill bourbon cask. It’s a really wonderful whisky, with the environmental differences in Australia for its production and maturation presumably having a large effect on its deviation for what one might expect from a 3 year old single malt whisky in a bourbon barrel.
The other fun side of this bottle is its journey being set in front of us. After some years of bottle shares and exchanges, the folks behind the distillery and the bottler realised that they should actually release something together, marking the first UK release of Higwayman whisky. So, a cask was chosen, half was disgorged and bottled for Australia, then the remainder was shipped over to Scotland. And, once again, HMRC got themselves flustered as Australian spirit, let alone half empty barrels of it, proved difficult for them to grasp. By the time the 100 bottles were ready for sale here, it had already sold out in Australia.
Notes: 👃🏻Buttered spinach on rye, fenugreek, milk chocolate, rosemary green beans, almond, rubbery liquorice, marzipan, bergamot 👄Smoked rye, toffee, engine oil + earthy, mango, strawberry.
AD – Dailuaine 16yo
Single Malt Scotch Whisky – 57.1%
For our final bottle of the night, it’s a little unusual to see Speyside on the label, but if you look closely enough, you can just make out Ardbeg too. A wonderfully rare thing: 3 casks of Dailuaine married and finished in a refill-sherry ex-Ardbeg butt. The two, quite different spirits, are integrated well, with the Ardbeg maybe not having quite the punch present as one might expect. But there is smoke and meat amongst the sweetness.
The Artful Dodger website alludes to this being saved from the hands of blenders. That could be flavourful fabricated lore for the website, but it could also be that it is the result of a re-casking accident, or a delightful experiment, or something very common behind closed warehouse doors that we just don’t get to see because, well, why would a distillery under Diageo’s umbrella risk it?!
I think, in the room, after the delight of the Highwayman, this didn’t quite scratch the itch that the smoke-heads had been waiting for, but was far enough along that the peat-deniers also weren’t entirely on board. For me, it does what it says on the tin – you get both worlds; maybe it’s something to return to without 5 cask strength whiskies before it!
Notes: 👃🏻Vanilla, pickle juice, apple juice, balsamic, chalky, caramel 👄Earthy green bean, tobacco, toffee, banoffee, bile, rubbery, peppered sausage.
The Winners
Vote Winner: Bottle #5 – CYWL Highwayman
Brand Winner: Cut Your Wolf Loose
Close Contender: #2 – AD Caperdonich
We took 2 votes, at Hugo’s suggestion: one for favourite brand, one for favourite bottle. Cut Your Wolf Loose won both, with the curious Highwayman capturing hearts and reinforcing Hugo’s love of it. The Artful Dodger Caperdonich was a close second on the bottle vote; I bet there aren’t many Scotch whisky writers or predictors of the future that would have seen a 29 year old Caperdonich bested by a 3 year old, and from Australia no less. For me though, that’s one of the things I love about whisky: there’s so much choice and variety, and so much innovation away from the watchful gaze of the Scotch Whisky Association that leads to whiskies to complement and compete with even Scotland’s best.
While researching things online for this write-up, I found an article from about a year ago (on the wonderful Words Of Whisky) referencing a quote from a book, published about 2 years before that, on independent bottlers. The book is called Independent Scotch, by David Stirk, and the quote was from Seb Woolf. He describes some earlier cask acquisition days when distilleries like Clynelish, Laphroaig, and Glenrothes were happy to part ways with casks, and updates that ‘now’ these are unavailable due to global demand and in-house projects. Considering the lead time for a book, this is maybe something Seb said 4 years ago, and he attributed this change in fact to the success of independent bottlers, raising the profile of distilleries and whiskies, causing the distilleries themselves to reconsider just how these casks were being sold. He also predicted a 3 to 6 year window when this would turn back around as the distilleries realised they couldn’t do quite what the indies had been doing. With all the news lately on overproduction of Scotch whisky, downsizing and closures, it looks like Seb has a pretty good handle on how the industry works. I think that means we might be about to see indie bottlers gaining access to more stocks again, and at appropriate prices, as the distilleries try to stay afloat. Which, in turn, could lead to a boom period for indie bottlers – although there could well be a lead time as they work out what they should age for longer or finish interestingly. Either way, if distilleries have whisky to shift, brands like Artful Dodger and Cut Your Wolf Loose should have no shortage of collectable casks to save from the hands of those who would not see them end up in bottles for the rest of us!