Following from the success of The Legendary Silkie Irish Whiskey, Dark Silkie and Dark Silkie Cask Strength, Sliabh Liag Distillers are set to release their new limited edition, The Legendary Red Silkie Irish Whiskey. Drawing inspiration from perhaps one of the most famous sons of Donegal, Red Hugh O’Donnell, often referred to as Aodh Rúa. Red Silkie has been carefully finished in two types of wine cask giving a balanced and sweet fruit complexity to the award-winning Silkie Irish Whiskey blend.
While the Silkie Irish Whiskey range is inspired by the legend of the Silkie seals, told around the Donegal coast, Red Silkie plays homage to a real-life legend, one of the last Chieftains of Donegal, Red Hugh O’Donnell. O’Donnell left Ireland in 1602 to travel to Spain in the hope of garnering the support of King Philip of Spain to reclaim his lands in Donegal. Sadly, Hugh O’Donnell died at Castle Simancas, near the Ribera del Duero wine region, before he could return home to Donegal with his army.
To create this limited edition, Sliabh Liag Distillers have used casks from the Ribera del Duero and the Rioja regions of Spain to finish the whiskey. Wines from the Ribera region tend to be full bodied with firm tannins while Rioja wines lead with big fruit flavours. This combination of wine cask finishes gives the whiskey extraordinary depth of character. Speaking on their newest release, Managing Director and founder of Sliabh Liag Distillers, James Doherty said
“in The Legendary Red Silkie we celebrate the legends of Donegal and bring another dimension to our Silkie Irish whiskey. The cask finishing process allows us to extend particular characteristics, with the rioja casks deepening the intrinsic sweetness of the Silkie blend and I particularly like the way those flavours are balanced by the dry oaky and port-like quality we get from the Ribera del Duero casks.”
The Legendary Red Silkie Irish Whiskey has ripe red berry, nutmeg, sandalwood and dried apple on the nose. To taste, the whiskey is aromatic and sweet, strawberry coulis, marmalade, dried fruit steeping in Earl grey tea; and opens to dry wine notes, and oak tannins and maintains a crisp freshness. The lasting finish is resin sweet followed by a drying wine tannin and a hint of smoke that ebbs away.
The Red Silkie packaging follows the striking design of the Silkie range, with the addition now of a deep ruby red colour – an ode to Red Hugh and the wines he would have enjoyed while on his final journey. Red Silkie will be available in gift tubes that trace his journey from Donegal via Kinsale to Simancas.
Doherty went onto say
“It has been an extraordinary year for Sliabh Liag Distillers, laying down our first whiskey in Carrick, starting the new distillery in Ardara, and we are excited by the Red Silkie which is the first in a series of limited releases finishing at the Distillery in Carrick. There will also be 210 bottles at Cask Strength of 63.2% available only from the Distillery online shop.”
As with all of Sliabh Liag Distillers’ award-winning spirits, Red Silkie is hand bottled at the distillery in Co. Donegal.
The Legendary Red Silkie will be available in select retail outlets in Ireland, The UK, Belgium, Germany, The Netherlands and Denmark in the coming weeks, with only 1100 bottles being distributed in total.
For more information or to pick up a bottle of The Legendary Red Silkie in the UK or Ireland, visit www.sliabhliagdistillers.com/shop and follow @silkiewhiskey
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