A cask filled at Glenfiddich this morning will not be opened for at least twelve years. The person filling it has to be right about a flavour that does not yet exist and cannot be sampled for a decade. That is the working condition Brian Kinsman, Glenfiddich's Malt Master, shares with Adrian Newey, the Aston Martin Formula One Team's Managing Technical Partner, who spends his days shaping airflow around cars nobody has built. It is also the premise of their partnership's second release, a 16-Year-Old Limited Edition that arrived this August with a five-cask maturation story and a price tag that undercuts most whisky this considered.
Five Casks, One Expression
Where the first release worked through the influence of American oak, Release No.2 layers flavour across five distinct cask types: first-fill Bourbon barrels, Port pipes, Oloroso Sherry casks, wine casks and Fino Sherry butts. Each contributes its own character, texture and depth. Kinsman describes the result as vibrant with fruit, layered with warmth, and brought into perfect balance, and the tasting notes bear that out. Caramelised cane sugar and creamy toffee sweetness open onto dry oak tannin, with dark red fruit and cherry notes pushing through the mid-palate and a touch of oaky sweetness on the finish.
For Kinsman, the parallel with Newey's craft is clear. What I find most compelling about Adrian's work is that the defining performance often comes from what you cannot immediately see, he says. Behind every Aston Martin Formula One team car are hundreds of small decisions, carefully refined to create a seamless whole. The same is true in whisky making.
Patience Under Pressure
Kinsman's apprenticeship under David Stewart MBE lasted eight years. He has now been with William Grant and Sons for nearly three decades, and he is blunt about the fact that there are no shortcuts. Every day is an opportunity to learn more about our stocks, flavour development and experimentation results, he says. The world of innovation in single malt is all about constantly balancing the past and the future. Spirit filled today has to remain capable of becoming a twelve-, a fifteen- or an eighteen-year. Most of Kinsman's time goes to the protective side: ensuring core flavour profiles are maintained while experimenting in directions that may or may not work.
Newey describes the opposing pressure on his side. You keep developing until the deadline says that's it, pens down, give it over to manufacturing, he says. An idea has to survive the handover to production, then work with a set of components largely carried over from the previous car. Performance is won in how those parts are refined and fitted together.
Beyond the Circuit
In its second year, the partnership has moved beyond the track. Glenfiddich now meets Formula One's audience in the cities around each race: a bar pop-up on the Miami F1 Campus, a Prime 54 pairing dinner, tie-ups with Rao's and Loews in Miami, with plans lined up alongside the team's other sponsors in Austin and Las Vegas. The whisky is present in those cities outside race week, too, turning a seasonal activation into something closer to a year-round presence.
Underneath the pop-ups and the pairing dinners are two working methods that look nothing alike yet rest on the same bet. Kinsman fills casks he will not taste for sixteen years. Newey keeps developing until the deadline says stop. Both are committing to work whose results arrive long after the decision is made. The Glenfiddich and Aston Martin Formula One Team 16-Year-Old Limited Edition Release No.2 is bottled at 43 per cent ABV and available from Selfridges and Master of Malt for seventy-five pounds. Four hundred units have been allocated to Spain, launched at The Racer's Lounge in Madrid ahead of the city's first Grand Prix.
