Springbank's reputation rests on a kind of stubbornness. The Mitchell family have run the Campbeltown distillery without interruption since 1828, and almost every step of production — floor malting, milling, mashing, fermentation, distillation, maturation and bottling — still happens within the same walls. Of the thirty-odd Campbeltown distilleries that once operated here, only Springbank, Glen Scotia and Glengyle remain.
This 17 Year Old Madeira release is part of the distillery's rolling programme of limited cask-finished expressions, bottled at cask strength, non-chill-filtered and with no added colour. Madeira has long been a favoured wood at Springbank, the wine's oxidative, nutty character finding common ground with the spirit's own oily, coastal weight.
The nose offers walnut and dried apricot, beeswax and sea spray, with the quiet thread of coal smoke that runs through almost everything bearing the Springbank name. The palate is dense — toffee, fig, salted nuts and orange peel — and the texture is unmistakably the house's own: oily, mouth-coating, slightly waxy. The finish runs long and savoury, drying through walnut oil and faint peat.
Springbank's two-and-a-half times distillation produces a spirit that takes age and unusual cask finishes without losing its bearings, and the seventeen years here has neither softened nor worn down its character. It is, as ever from Longrow Street, a whisky that asks nothing of fashion.
