Don’t Buy Springbank Whisky!

 Don’t Buy Springbank Whisky!

If this was a YouTube video, then the title would make terrific clickbait. But let me now explain what I mean.

This is a prelude article to set the context for the main Springbank 5-Year-Old 100° Proof (57.1% ABV) review. It’s a way of getting the controversial current market issues out of the way beforehand, instead of bloating the main whisky review where I am supposed to be concentrating on the actual whisky's tasting notes.

For a general introduction to the whiskies of the Campbeltown region, please see my article on Glen Scotia 10, here:

Introduction

Springbank, found in the heart of the town of Campbeltown, was founded in 1828 by the Mitchell family and is still owned and managed by their descendants under the company name of J&A Mitchell & Co., making it the oldest independent, family-owned distillery in Scotland.

However, as far as uniqueness goes, we are just getting started. Springbank is pretty much universally recognised as one of, if not the most respected, admired and dare I say, worshipped distilleries in Scotland.

For example, you won’t find a single computer used in its entire whisky production. Calculations of amounts and temperatures are recorded with chalk on blackboards. One hundred percent of the malted barley it uses comes from its traditional malting floor, still processed using basic, manually operated equipment. It still uses direct fire heating for its stills and cools the spirit using copper worm tubs. The entire whisky making process is done on-site, from malting the barley and local warehouse maturation to bottling and labelling. What’s more, they have an active social community responsibility policy to only hire locals.

Not only do they insist on keeping everything authentic and traditional, they even make sure to state either on the label or their website which type casks are used in all their releases.

There are many distilleries around Scotland such as Bruichladdich, Kilchoman, Glen Scotia, Benromach, Craigellachie etc, that can boast one or even two or three of these practices but none but Springbank can claim to do all of them.

The many dedicated and zealous Springbank fans will eagerly inform you that the distillery operates as a living time capsule of traditional Campbeltown whisky making, with its world famous Campbeltown industrial style oily, maritime and “funky” style of whisky.

What’s more, the distillery doesn’t just stick to one kind of Single Malt but is committed to keeping these historical Campbeltown whisky styles alive. To that end, they produce these three very different types of whisky, preserving the names of long ago closed Campbeltown distilleries.

The Three Types of Single Malt Whiskies:

Springbank: Lightly peated and distilled 2.5 times using a highly unique, complex system of mixing low wines and feints.

Longrow: Heavily peated (50–55 ppm) and double-distilled, creating a powerful, intensely smoky, Islay-style dram.

Hazelburn: This is Irish style whisky, being completely unpeated and triple-distilled, resulting in a light, delicate, and fruity flavour profile. By the way, Campbeltown is only 70 miles from Ireland as the crow flies.

No wonder that Springbank is ranked by so many whisky enthusiasts as the World’s Greatest Distillery. The one distillery that you can put your faith into always prioritising “Integrity” bottlings with the highest uncompromising quality over any commercial considerations.

You’d think that with a pedigree like this, Springbank would be at least in my top ten personal favourite distilleries and I’d be talking about it all the time. After all, don’t I go on and on about wanting more integrity and transparency in the Scotch Whisky industry? Don’t I constantly campaign for 100% full disclosure in the industry when it comes to cask types used for maturation so that the strictly kosher consumer can know immediately what they can and cannot purchase? Instead, as long-time readers of my website will know, I have hardly ever mentioned this distillery.

But why?

Why in over 15 years of writing about all thing’s whisky have I never written a review of Springbank? Why have I effectively consigned this distillery and the spirit it produces to the filing cabinet of insignificance?

 

The Ardnamurchan Syndrome?

From merely a kashrus point of view, even had I wanted to, there is a very simple reason why I wouldn’t have reviewed too many Springbanks. That is, because it suffers somewhat from what I call the “Ardnamurchan” syndrome!

Despite the fact that if you walk into the warehouses of both Ardnamurchan and Springbank distilleries (as I have done), you’ll see rows and rows of Bourbon barrels sitting there quietly maturing, both these distilleries’ default house styles are various marriages of Ex-Bourbon and Ex-Sherry (or wine) casks. Vattings vary from 80%/20% ratios, others are 70%/30% but because they include a significant percentage of First-Fill Ex-Sherry casks, it is these casks that will dominate the overall flavour of the expressions, rendering them “Not Approved” by many Poskim.

Despite thoroughly enjoying their private distillery tour and tasting session back in November 2021, where I got to sample the contents of a few of their Bourbon and Rum barrels, I’ve been nagging both the guys at Ardnamurchan as well as kvetching to fellow whisky enthusiasts, that they really should release an edition that is exclusively Ex-Bourbon.

Some of you might remember that I reviewed a Limited-Edition Rum Cask from Ardnamurchan that I managed to pick up in Scotland some time ago. This was, up until now, the only “kosher” option available from them.

Well, I am delighted to inform you all that as of the time of writing, not one hour ago, I took delivery of two bottles of Ardnamurchan’s latest release - The “AD Heritage Barley 2025” which is 100% Ex-Bourbon barrel matured and currently available here in Israel to boot, through the Whisky Embassy in Herzliya.  (Bli Neder, I’ll let you know how I get on with this very soon).

However, Springbank have produced a few Ex-Bourbon and Ex-Rum Cask expressions over the years but I’ve never reviewed any (at least up ‘til now). Besides, the Ardnamurchan Syndrome is not the reason why I rarely talk about this distillery.

 

The Real Reason Why I’ve Been Ignoring Springbank

The Art of Flipping

When I visited the distillery for the first time back in 2019, I found three bottles in their shop that had no Stam Yeinam cask influence and bought all three to try. These are the tasting notes of two of them from that time:

Hazelburn 10-Year-Old. 100% Ex-Bourbon, 46% abv

Triple distilled in the Irish style; it has green fruits. Green Pairs, Green Melon, just going ripe banana, Kiwi, white grapes and Lemonade on the nose. Tasting: Melon Ice-cream, light and deliciously fruity. Butter cream. It reminds me very much of a good Oaky buttery vanilla spicy Chardonnay wine. (As a wine, it would be a real bruiser). Loads of buttery oak, Apple, Honey and Lemon sherbet “Space Dust” on the finish.

This is considered part of their basic core-range but as I soon found out, looking online then (and things have only got worse since then), you couldn’t find it anywhere for its RRP of under £60. Instead, doing a Google, you’d find specialist whisky shops and auctions selling this 10-Year-Old for 3-4 times the distillery price.

By the way, Springbank distillery has no online store. It simply lists the editions on its website that are theoretically available either at the distillery shop or with suppliers around the world. So, in order to buy at their RRP, you’d have to physically go to the distillery (or send someone else) to purchase your bottle.

Longrow (Peated) NAS Edition. 100% Ex-Bourbon, 46% abv

On the nose it has an unpleasant burnt plastic bag smell with burnt electrical cables.

Harsh spirit even with water added. You’d be hard pressed to get even a hint of fruit.

It’s oily in the mouth, like old engine oil. It’s actually quite palatable with ice, revealing some lemon grind. I must admit that after a few months it did improve somewhat but, bli neder, I won’t be buying this again.

This is also considered part of the basic core-range. You can dafka, purchase this in some online stores today for around £50, but in my opinion, I wouldn’t bother, either drinking or investment wise.

Springbank 15-Year-Old Rum Wood Cask. 51% abv

This 15-Year-Old Rum Cask cost me £65 in the distillery. My first introduction into the sordid world of Springbank “flipping” was when the distillery staff told me that I could only purchase a single bottle of this. I usually buy two bottles of anything I want to review - one to open and one to keep as an historical record. This time however, I would have to make do with just one.

When we got back to our self-catering chalet along the A83 which serves the length of the Kintyre peninsula, I looked up just how problematic Springbank bottle flipping was. I was astonished to see that this very bottle of 15-Year-Old Rum cask that I had just purchased had quadrupled in value the moment I stepped outside the distillery.

Indeed, looking back on it, I do seem to remember seeing some guys that didn’t exactly look like whisky enthusiasts, “visiting” the distillery and buying bottles, then promptly leaving, as if they were visiting the local off-license. (A British term for a shop, often a small high-street food store but sometimes a specialist wine and spirits place, that is also licensed to sell alcohol for consumption “off the premises”. Many of them have a seedy reputation of men walking into the store and coming out with a bar of chocolate and a brown paper bag containing a bottle of something).

I learnt later that these men leave the distillery and meet up with either an investment broker or agent or perhaps someone from a specialist whisky shop, selling them the bottles and making an immediate profit of four times the RRP. Often, they’ll sell them to middle-men who will ship them to Asia and other parts of the world. When they arrive there, they are sold for six or eight times the original distillery price. This, ladies and gentlemen, is what’s known as “flipping”.

This is what Google says about “Flipping”:

"Flipping" in the whisky industry is the practice of buying highly sought-after rare bottles at retail price and immediately reselling them on the secondary market for a rapid, often massive profit. Driven by the global obsession of collecting bottles of whisky from certain distilleries such as Springbank and Macallan, this phenomenon mirrors “ticket scalping” or sneaker collecting.

No wonder that this Springbank 15-Year-Old Rum Wood Cask is still sitting in my display cabinet in 2026. Current auction values are now heading towards the £1,000 mark. At prices like these, I wouldn’t even think of opening it even for a big simcha. Besides, no one would appreciate it, not even me. So, it sits there in my glass cabinet until I decide what to do with it.

As Rare as Hen’s Teeth

So, I looked on The Whisky Exchange website, London based and probably the biggest online whisky store in the world with up to 10,000 bottles in stock at any time. They have the Longrow (Peated) NAS Edition in stock and that's it at the RRP. I can understand why flippers wouldn’t be interested in this. Then, clicking on “List by Low to High”, the next bottle of Springbank is £400 and that’s not even an official bottling but an independent bottle from Signatory. Official bottlings start at £500, then jump up to £800 and then get into the thousands.

Master of Malt, considered the second biggest online whisky store, has a slightly better choice. They feature three bottles at around £150 (unfortunately, none of them suitable for the strictly kosher consumer), and after these, the price jumps up to £400, then £500 and then we get into funny-money territory with four figure prices. Are you beginning to see a pattern here?

When it comes to Springbank, what does a “core range” actually mean? It certainly does not mean “widely available”!

In my opinion, you cannot even compare Springbank bottlings to Limited Editions like an Official Bottling Single Cask or similar from independent bottlers, because although there might also be only a few hundred bottles of that specific bottling, there’s always something similar that will replace it when that Single Cask Edition runs out. Springbank on the other hand, seems Out-Of-Stock almost everywhere on an almost permanent basis.

 

Demand Outstrips Capacity

According to the Malt Whisky Yearbook 2026, Springbank has the theoretical capacity to produce around half a million litres per year. That makes it more than “boutique” but still a relatively small Scottish distillery. However, by their own admission, Springbank only produce a fraction of that capacity each year. Annual output runs at just over 200,000 litres. When asked why they intentionally under produce, they say that they “wish to preserve their heritage by doing everything on-site and manually”, and they have no wish to keep the distillery running 24/7. This family run and community sensitive distillery will tell you that they want their workers to have regular “Nine to Five” working hours.

So, unless you are willing to shlepp to the distillery in Campbeltown, the only way you’ll get to buy and try Springbank is to pay hundreds and sometimes thousands of pounds in specialist online shops or from investment brokers. This is because their (although greatly admired) doggedness policy of sticking to old manual traditional whisky practices using only the malted barley from its tiny malting floor etc., inevitably severely limits the amount of whisky the distillery can produce every year! That means that almost every expression they release becomes a rare collectable as soon as its bottled and leaves the distillery.

 

The Springbank 5-Year-Old 100° Proof 57.1% vol

But, what of their latest Springbank Edition – The Springbank 5-Year-Old 100° Proof 57.1% vol? It’s unusual in so many ways. It’s the first new so called “core-range” (see my comment above), addition since they launched the Hazelburn 10-Year-Old back in 2014, marking a gap of 11 years. For any other distillery, that would be commercial suicide.

Along with its release back in August 2025, they issued a statement saying that in order to combat global scarcity and high demand [in other words, they mean “flipping”], the distillery is now producing this Springbank 5-Year-Old 100° Proof 57.1% vol bottle as a “permanent” quarterly annual release.

Another unusual aspect of this release is the Age statement. They proudly state “5-Year” on the font label. The only other established distillery to do this as far as I am aware, is Ardbeg with their “5-Year-Old Wee Beastie” Edition. (Of course, this does not include the new distilleries such as Ardnahoe, Lochlea, Torabhaig and Bonnington who have only been maturing whisky for a few years that release with age statements of three, four, five and six years).

No doubt, this young age statement from Springbank is a further attempt to dissuade the “collectors”. Will all this go somewhere to solving the flipping problem? (No double entendre intended). Will everyone (more or less), now be able to get hold of at least one expression of Springbank? At just 5 years old, does this edition even qualify as the genuine Springbank flavour experience? All this and more will be covered in part 2 of this article.

Distillery of the Year? Perhaps Distillery of the Century?

Whenever whisky reviewers make Springbank their “Distillery of the Year” or crown a particular Springbank, Longrow or Hazelburn as their “Whisky of the Year”, I have been first in the comments section, politely but forcefully questioning the distillery’s eligibility for such awards.

I am left wondering if Springbank should even be considered for these accolades because 99% of enthusiasts cannot actually buy their bottles. Furthermore, the usual flood of online votes for Springbank products every year on the OSWAs website really puzzles me. The organisers must surely know that only a small minority of those voting could have possibly ever tasted a drop of actual whisky from this distillery. How legitimate are these votes if those voting haven’t actually experienced the whisky themselves but are instead voting vicariously based on reputation alone?

Is it just me or are there others who find it mystifying how Springbank and its whiskies win awards year after year? Surely, a distillery that does not produce enough whisky for more than a lucky few to even sample, should honestly reconsider if they should even be competing against distilleries whose liquid is of comparable quality but are readily available. What benefit to the health of the Scotch Whisky Industry and how relevant is it to whisky enthusiasts for Springbank to win the "Distillery of the Year" award every single year?

It's like awarding “Best Car of the Year” to a British car company down in Cornwall that hand builds five cars a year. As far as even premium car buyers are concerned, that company may as well not exist. Surely the award should go to a company that manufacturers car models that it is at least possible to obtain?

It seems that these awards are grading the liquid purely as an artistic achievement in a vacuum. To them, if a whisky tastes unique and “flawless”, it somehow deserves the trophy, even if only 500 bottles exist in the world and the majority have all been bought and locked up in some investors' safe.

A true "Product of the Year" should be a triumph of both quality and accessibility. These awards should reward a distillery for delivering an exceptional experience to the actual community, not just to a handful of ultra-wealthy whisky drinkers to stock the cabinet of their private jets and premium whisky lounges in Asia and the Middle East.

Now, I want to be clear about something. Chas VeShalom, I am in no way saying that Springbank distillery is irrelevant. On the contrary, they remain the Scotch Whisky Industry's ultimate ideal, living proof that uncompromising perfection still exists in a highly corporate world. Their operations may defy modern economic logic, but they set a standard of purity that forces every other distillery to aim higher.

In my personal opinion, Springbank is an essential treasure of the entire whisky world - a monument to be revered rather than an eligible contender for awards in a consumer and profit driven marketplace.

 

Springbank Alternatives

Lastly, for those seeking a comparable (in terms of quality), Single Malt Whisky from the "Premier League" of Scotch Malt distilleries but one you can actually buy, then there is Baruch Hashem, plenty of choice.

Look to Bruichladdich, Lochranza (Arran), Ardnamurchan, Ardnahoe, Kilchoman, Glasgow 1770, or Benromach. There is also Kilkerran from Glengyle, Springbank’s own sister distillery. For the time being, Kilkerran remains much more accessible simply because it hasn't yet been swallowed up by the collectors' market.

As direct Springbank alternatives, Kilkerran, along with Glen Scotia are the perfect choices. Both will give you that genuine Campbeltown funky coastal style flavour profile without the accompanying price-tag.

So, unless you are actually planning on visiting the distillery any time soon (which I intend to cover in Part 2), then there’s really no need to spend these ridiculous amounts of money just for that Springbank label.