This year has seen us, at ACM, trying out new whiskies and wines. A friend of ours recently tipped us off about an eccentrically named whisky called 'Sheep Dip'. This was once (back in the 80's) the best selling whisky in Harrods. A whisky whose distinctively full-bodied flavour is only reached through weaving together sixteen different single malt whiskies, aged between eight and twenty years, in specially selected first-fill oak casks.
So why the name Sheep Dip? An old West Country term, British farmers have long referred to whisky as Sheep Dip (which was an insecticide used to delouse sheep prior to sheering). There was a time when farmers distilled their own 'home made' whisky, and in order to avoid paying taxes to the revenue man, they'd hide it in barrels marked 'SD'.
In the 1980's, farmers were ordering hundreds of cases of Sheep Dip whisky through farming wholesalers. They were putting it through their business expenses as an insecticide. Unfortunately they didn't all have a flock of sheep, and many were caught and fined for tax evasion — an infamous episode in our history!
www.spencerfieldspirit.com
Never heard of it so it's nice to hear about a new/old one. Would like to try it for sure.
ReplyDeleteThat's a clever name and interesting history, I'll have to try it out
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