Bacardi GTR introduces Dewar’s Double Double 21 Year Old Stone Toasted
A Dewar’s Double Double 21 Year Old Stone Toasted Discovery Pack is featuring exclusively with China Duty Free Group throughout May
Bacardi Global Travel Retail chose the TFWA Asia Pacific Exhibition to feature the latest addition to its Dewar’s blended Scotch whisky portfolio.
Dewar’s Double Double 21 Year Old Stone Toasted is one of the key whisky innovations launching this year, with a travel retail-exclusive Discovery Pack of two expressions launched and featured exclusively with China Duty Free Group throughout the month of May.
The Discovery Pack includes two 75cl whisky expressions bottled at 46% ABV, with natural color and no chill-filtration: Dewar’s Double Double 21 Year Old Stone Toasted with Magma, using American Oak and French Oak casks. With a RRP of US$440, the Discovery Pack will roll out to other travel retail locations in Asia Pacific, India and the Middle East and the Americas from June 2024.
First revealed in 2019, Dewar’s Double Double is a small batch premium blended Scotch whisky series, crafted using an innovative four-step aging process. Featured whiskies have already won multiple international awards and strong global recognition.
Stone Toasted is the latest iteration of the Dewar’s series, highlighting new ways to enhance flavor possibilities through cask maturation. The new expressions showcase the influence of oak and how it is seasoned. Typically, the inside of a cask is ‘toasted’ or ‘charred’ over an open flame or oven, for a matter of seconds. However, Stone Toasted casks – a method pioneered only in the last decade for high-end wines – involves a gentler, slower approach, to give more precision on toast levels.
The non-combustion process in the travel retail exclusive Discovery Pack whiskies uses Magma stones and water elements, which are combined with heat to create casks that are toasted, evenly and consistently. The rotating stones are warmed and gradually emit heat to gently open the oak’s pores. Adjustments to toasting durations, yield diverse flavor combinations.
Darragh Ryan, Marketing Director, Bacardi Global Travel Retail, said, “Premium whisky is a high growth opportunity for travel retail and a ‘must shop’ category for whisky connoisseurs and collectors, who consider travel retail a quality environment for new discoveries. Exclusive products like the Dewar’s Double Double 21 Year Old Stone Toasted are just the kind of innovations that inspire them. We are on a constant mission to bring dynamism to the category to inspire these shoppers, especially those who are curious to find new twists on this classic category and we have a strong pipeline of launches for the year ahead, led by DEWAR’S Double Double Stone Toasted in May 2024.”
Multi-award winning Master Blender Stephanie Macleod, added, “Dewar’s is constantly innovating, so it’s only natural to explore how new flavor experiences can be created for our whisky drinkers. The Stone Toasting method was originally created for finishing wine, and we were intrigued to explore the effect on whisky. This series is all about showcasing the impact of the oak on the finishing liquid: American versus French, toasting levels and the source of the heat.”
In the final step of the four-stage Double Double ageing process, the blended Scotch whisky, which has aged for a minimum of 21 years, is finished for six months in stone toasted casks. This phase is crucial in influencing the final flavor of the whisky. The stone toasted casks enhance fruit, finesse and elegance while minimizing the impact of oak on the resting whisky.
“Gently toasting the wood slowly opens the oak, which extracts softer, silkier textures and more refined, richer flavors from the cask,” Macleod added.
