TAKE A LOOK BACK THROUGH OUR HUNTRESS SERIES

The Huntress Series

Springtime on the Morvern peninsular is always warmly welcomed by the team here at Nc’nean. As we emerge from our long, dark winter, bluebells and birdsong fill the forest and the days grow long, seemingly unending. The beauty of the landscape and the blossoming wildlife remind us why this is such a special place to live, work and make whisky.

For us, it’s a time of reflection and creation, where experiments carried out years prior will finally come to fruition. Casks holding rare spirit from our annual yeast trials are sampled and blended, discussed and debated. We’re searching for new flavours and new inspiration for our limited-edition Huntress single malt.

In this post, we’ll take a look back through our Huntress series to show how and why we do it. Whisky is not all about age, it’s about flavour, texture, personal experience, intangible qualities which makes single malt whisky so intriguing.

Let’s start at the beginning.

Huntress 2022 – 4447 bottles, released Spring 2022

Our first Huntress. Releasing a new whisky can be daunting. We loved it, but what would everyone else think? This wasn’t just an older version of our Flagship single malt as most distilleries would do, it was something very different.

We carried out trials in August 2018 where we experimented with yeast from different areas of alcohol production – Bordeaux wine, Tequila and rum.

These trials were done on a small, 10 litre homebrew scale, where sugary wort was fermented by different yeast strains in separate buckets. The resulting wash (fermented liquid) was sampled for flavour and level of alcohol. From these 10 litre batches, the most interesting was chosen for full scale production lasting 4-6 weeks.

We use our experience to extrapolate how the finished spirit will taste based on the quality of the wash, which is never an exact science – but our team have decades of experience between them, and we’re getting better each year. This trial format works well, and it’s how we continue to do them today.

From 2018’s trial we chose the rum yeast. The wash from this was full of pineapple, apricot and apple aromas, as well as an unexpected vinous character alongside what is described in the original notes as an ‘interesting tang’.

Full scale production followed. The mashing happened as normal but this alternative yeast was used for fermentation, followed by our standard distillation regime using our normal cut points. The new make was as we had expected – tropical fruits at the fore backed up by pure barley sweetness.

The casks chosen for this release were 61% STR casks (shaved, toasted and recharred red wine hogsheads) and 39% American Whiskey barrels (a mixture of bourbon and other American whiskey casks).

The whisky itself still had that tropical fruit character, with a mineral backbone and a honeyed sweetness.

Huntress 2023 Woodland Candy – 4556 bottles, released Spring 2023

This is the first Huntress release to feature a subtitle evoking the character of the whisky – forest fruits, soft sweets. 

Woodland Candy was the result of yeast trials from 2017 and 2018.

From 2017’s trial we chose a yeast typically used for the production of young, fresh, New World white wines, in particular Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc. This yeast gives passionfruit and guava notes, with a vibrant, zesty character unfolding throughout our long fermentation. The spirit was filled equally into first fill bourbon and STR casks.

The 2018 trial gave us the rum yeast we used for the Huntress 2022 release, but we were also impressed by the Bordeaux wine yeast. Notes of bubble gum, red fruits and almond oil, with a herbaceous hint too. We filled twice as many STRs as bourbon casks for this spirit, to enhance the red berry notes.

When it was time for blending, we balanced these two malts with our standard spirit recipe in a move which would continue through later releases. We also matched the cask makeup of this release with our Flagship whisky (at that time 65% STR, 35% bourbon). This highlights the impact of yeast on the overall character when comparing the two whiskies, and keeps that common Nc’nean thread running through everything we bottle.

Huntress 2024 Orchard Cobbler – 6153 bottles, released Spring 2024

Now this was something a little different, more a case of serendipity than painstaking experiment.

At Nc’nean we spend most of the year producing our ‘young’ spirit recipe – bright, elegant and fruity, perfect for release after 5, 6, 7 years in cask. Then, for around 6 weeks each year, we’ll switch to our ‘old’ recipe: we use just one distilling yeast rather than two, and, crucially, we lower the cut points. This spirit is somewhat more traditional in character, and destined to mature for at least 10 years.

Huntress Orchard Cobbler comes from weeks where we change from our ‘old’ recipe back to our ‘young’ recipe. While distilling our ‘old’ recipe with those lower cut points, our Low Wines & Feints Receiver (the vessel that collects distillate to be redistilled the following day) is flooded with higher strength alcohols than normal. This bright, vibrant spirit is concentrated in the tank over the 6 weeks while we’re selecting the lower strength, deeper flavoured alcohols for our heart cut. Then, when we switch back to our ‘young’ recipe and the cut points are raised again, these super fruity compounds are captured and filled into cask.

We noticed this change in spirit character in the early days, both on the palate and in our spirit analysis reports. Orchard Cobbler is selected entirely from casks filled in 2017, 2018 and 2019 during those special weeks.

We found this spirit worked exceptionally well in our STR casks, so for this release we chose 66% STR, 31% bourbon and just a hint, 3%, sherry butt for depth and a touch of spice.

Huntress 2025 Lemon Meadow – 5729 bottles, released Spring 2025 This is a whisky which truly lived up to its name – citrusy and floral with those biscuity, buttery notes characteristic of good quality Champagnes. That makes perfect sense, as the strain of yeast we used was developed from Champagne yeasts. It’s also used for Tequila and Fruit Brandy production as it loves to eat fructose, the sugar found naturally in fruit. But it's not that fussy, and when metabolising maltose (the sugar from malt) it creates a complex wash with fresh rose and honey aromas.

We filled 10 casks with this spirit following our 2017 yeast trial – mostly bourbon to accentuate the freshness of this very distinctive new make. And when it came to creating the final whisky, we added seven STR casks and a touch of sherry butt containing our regular ‘young’ spirit recipe into the mix. This kept it recognisably Nc’nean and also means we used roughly the same proportions of cask types for the Huntress as for our Flagship whisky – the best way to highlight the impact of yeast on flavour creation.

That’s all the Huntress releases to date, they’re all different, all delicious, and will never be made the same way again. Each year’s yeast trial continues our search for new and interesting flavours, it keeps us learning, keeps us innovating, keeps us waiting, until finally we can share our discoveries with you.