Firkin Ten Linkwood

The one and only Mr. Mike Collings supplies not only our whisky wants this month with a ten-year-old Firkin Ten Linkwood finished in Madeira-seasoned, hybrid, custom casks – but also our Members Extra RUM! For the first time EVER the Single Malt Whisky Club is featuring ‘NOT a whisky’ in its line-up. Our ‘Members Extra’ is the WORLD EXCLUSIVE PREMIERE of the Firkin Whisky Co. very first bottling of a RUM! It’s a FIRKIN FIRST for all of us!

Now why are we featuring a rum alongside the Firkin Ten Linkwood 2010 you might ask? Well, we also run a fine rum club – The Rum Tribe – as well as the Single Malt Whisky Club and with such an old friend and bottler as Mike Collings dipping his toes into the rum bottling game – it just seemed like the perfect opportunity to pair his exceptional rum with our Malt of the Month and we know that a lot of whisky drinkers also like the occasional rum…and the Firkin Rum First Edition is a fabulous rum!

For our newer members, the Firkin Whisky Co. is the brainchild of a Mr. Mike Collings. Now Mike once used to work for a little company called Diageo, who valiantly scratched a living with one of their brands, Johnnie Walker (you may have heard of it?). Now whilst Mike was employed at said JW, he came up with a couple of products that you may have also heard of, or even seen and tasted. One of these is the Johnnie Walker Blue Label – said to be the finest (and certainly the most expensive) of all blended scotch whiskies. He also came up with the idea of a JW single malt – and hence the JW Green was his baby as well.

Amongst other accolades, he’s also the father of the Diageo Classic Malts Collection, Rare Malts, Distillers Edition, Flora & Fauna series, Cardhu and Royal Lochnagar Brands …< Takes breath!> and it goes on and on and on. Simply put, Mike’s high-end whisky ‘rap-sheet’ could wallpaper your lounge room.

His work in Scotch whisky is both iconic and award winning. But that’s not to say whisky is his only trick.

Mike’s ‘Rum Credentials’ are no less impressive. He was helping supply the Royal Navy with rum in the early eighties working for ‘Saccone & Speed’ – a company that had it’s start supplying Admiral Nelson’s ships with rum at Gibraltar! In fact, Mike’s first sales job (way back in 1973) was selling Navy Neaters Cask Strength Rum to the RN at Portsmouth. Mike has also distributed Cockspur and Pussers Rum in the UK – so he knows his rum too.

For the last few years, Mike has lived in Adelaide, travelling frequently to source for, and promote his Firkin Whisky Co. label. Essentially, the Firkin Whisky Co independently bottles single cask Scottish whisky after finishing it in their own bespoke hybrid casks made of alternating American first-fill Bourbon staves and new French Limousin oak staves with a custom char, seasoned with a variety of fortified wines. The hybrid oak composition plus the selection of cask-conditioning fortified wine – and the result is a FIRKIN good whisky!