
The name Sheep Dip is a tribute to a time when British farmers referred to their
own “home-made” whiskey as Sheep Dip in an attempt to avoid paying taxes. Love
it! Farmers would hide their whiskey in barrels marked “Sheep Dip” and farmers’ merchants
would often list whiskey on bills as “Sheep Dip” to hide it from the farmers’
wives. :-)
One of these days I’ll write a post about my own family’s
history with home distilling. Almost a hundred years ago, my Grandfather and
his brothers and cousins ran stills in the mountains of North Carolina and
Wyoming. It is a great story with a rich
history of incidents with law enforcement.
Some of my earliest memories are of my dad’s brothers visiting us and
bringing moonshine from NC.
But back to Sheep Dip.
Whiskey: Sheep Dip (Spencerfield Spirit Company)
Type: Blended malt Scotch whiskey
Origin: Scotland
My Review:
This is my kind of Scotch.
It has a light floral, fruity smell with warm hints of honey and
smoke. It has no heavy peat taste that
(at this time) doesn’t appeal to me. This light and warm blend of malts, honey,
and spices is a perfect introduction to Scotch, in my opinion. A much better choice than the bottom shelf
Scotches that many people try for the first time then declare that they don’t care
for Scotch.
Try it neat. Sheep
Dip is a 40% APV (80 Proof) and shouldn’t require much, if any, cutting. Perhaps a few
drops of water to suit your taste. I have seen comments that Sheep Dip can be
hard to find. Not my experience at all. I recently picked up a bottle at BevMo
at a very reasonable price.
Spencerfield Spirit Company is wholly owned and run by Alex
and Jane Nicol. The story of the creation of this company and how Sheep Dip
got started is told in Buxton’s book and at the Spencerfield website. Check it
out and fall in love with this entrepreneurial story.
Cheers.
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