GLENFIDDICH SNOW PHOENIX 
FEATURED STORY

There's a school of thought in the artistic world that claims that out of catastrophe, great or small, comes inspiration. It's an arguable point by many save those who have taken what catastrophes they've suffered in life and produced something inspired. While to many people it might not seem like such a tragedy, a cave in at the Glenfiddich Distillery was certainly enough of a catastrophe to inspire the good people at the Glenfiddich to try something new and altogether different.

It all started back in December of 2009. The winter months were hammering Speyside – the home of Glenfiddich Distillery as well as many others. Many structures were badly damaged, some even collapsed outright against the weather. The snow, throughout the winter, had undergone a continual process of freezing and thawing, back and forth, which finally culminated in roughly four feet of thick, packed snow resting on the roofs of the Glenfiddich Distillery.

Then, after weeks of enduring this environmental abuse, on the evening of January 7, 2010, the roofs simply collapsed. By the Glenfiddich's estimation, the amount of snow packed of their distillery roofs was the weight equivalent of parading a herd of elephants across the top of the buildings. All told, four roofs collapsed and many more were heavily damaged by this as-of-yet unheard of amount of snowfall – a heavy loss by any distillery's standards.

In response, the distillery crew immediately went to work after this happened to attempt to save as much of their still-maturing whisky as they possibly could. What made it worse was that they were forced to work in extremely short shifts, due to the incredibly cold temperatures which are said to have finally bottomed out at negative two degrees Fahrenheit.

But if inspiration comes out of catastrophe, Glenfiddich Malt Master Brian Kinsman certainly drew inspiration from the distillery's catastrophic cave-in, and subsequently created a rare Glenfiddich one-off bottling to mark the collapsed roofs in the already-storied history of the Glenfiddich as well as to commemorate the gargantuan efforts of the distillery crew who worked so hard to preserve as many of the Glenfiddich's casks as they possibly could.

He created The Snow Phoenix.

The Snow Phoenix is a vatting of whiskies salvaged from the snow-damaged warehouses on the Glenfiddich grounds. The whiskies used in the blend are remarkable on their own, as they were individually matured in a variety of barrels – some American oak, some that had previously stored Oloroso sherry, as well as others. These whiskies, aged anywhere from thirteen to thirty years old were then bottled non-chill-filtered and, perhaps unusually for the Glenfiddich, at cask strength.

Released in late 2010 and initially thought by some to be a marketing ploy simply to cover up a professional disaster, The Snow Phoenix was quick to shut the doubters and detractors up. In fact, The Snow Phoenix has been garnering critical praise ever since its release.

In short, it's an unusual whisky for unusual circumstances.

And as for the name? Yes, there's the obvious reference to the rising up from the ashes (or snowflakes, as it were) but if you get a chance, take a closer look at the tin the bottle comes packaged in. A photographer was luckily on hand the day the cave-in happened at the Glenfiddich Distillery, and captured a photograph of the collapsed warehouse roof – there seems to be a bird – a phoenix? – or at least, the outline of one in the blue-white winter's light shining in through the collapsed roof.

The Glenfiddich isn't a distillery to do many one-off bottlings, but, excusing the catastrophe itself, The Snow Phoenix was a fine reason to do so. With so few bottles of The Snow Phoenix floating around, it really is an unaged single malt for the inspired. After all, they're not going to be making any more, unless there's another cave-in in the Glenfiddich's future, and does anyone really want to take that chance?