Springbank And Other Unicorn Drams

Springbank

(And other unicorn drams. Or, as a witty customer once referred to them all, “Springy Van Bankle”).
In recent years certain corners of the whisky world have become rather fevered, and it can often seem that some whiskies are just not available any more. To try and minimise the frustration that fans no doubt feel, this page explains how we handle the white whales.

How We Sell Springbank

We don’t take pre-orders or reservations. If you phone or email us about such drams, we’ll simply point you in the direction of this very page.

If a particular bottling is especially limited or it seems even more sought after than the other, slightly less unicorn-y whiskies, then we’ll run a ballot. Our ballots are announced in our newsletter. If you haven’t already, go sign up, and be sure to tick the “Limited Editions” box (actually just tick all the boxes. Our newsletter is a right riveting read).

Although ballots are drawn randomly, we do always ask you to do something in order to enter, simply to try and reduce the number of entries.

Often, we’ll keep some stock of a rare whisky aside for our regular monthly whisky tasting. Attendees at the event then get to sample the whisky and possibly have a chance to buy a bottle.

After that’s been done, we start putting bottles on the shelves at 23 Bath Street. We do this one bottle at a time, and once a particular bottle has sold, we wait a random length of time before re-stocking. The idea is that you might wander in to the shop three weeks after Release Day and find a wee gem just sitting on the shelf waiting for you.

We also drip feed some bottles online. Again, this is done at random times, and unannounced, in the hope that we can avoid breaking our website.

And we also send some stock to our West End shop at 21 Clarence Drive.

What’s a Unicorn Dram?

This is a slightly tricky question to answer. Certainly the list would start with Springbank, Daftmill, the Buffalo Trace Antique Collection, Pappy Van Winkle, and Adelphi, but other distillers and bottlers will often be handled the same way. We know a unicorn when we see it…

How To Maximise Your Chance of Bagging a Rare Whisky

Have a Dram!

We offer limited releases to some of the whisky bars in Glasgow, so even if you’ve missed out on a bottle, there will still be a chance to taste it.

It's also worthwhile exploring other malts that have a similar flavour profile to Springbank: