Hooghoudt stock snapped up following closure
Following the permanent closure of 137-year-old Dutch distillery Hooghoudt, retailer Must Have Malts has acquired 314 of the site’s 587 remaining whisky casks.
In July last year, La Martiniquaise-Bardinet revealed plans to shut Dutch distillery Hooghoudt at the end of 2025.
The brand had been produced in its home city of Groningen for 137 years. Operations have now moved to La Martiniquaise-Bardinet’s distillery in Ghent, Belgium.
The distillery’s remaining casks were released to auction by Hooghoudt’s new brand owner, La Martiniquaise-Benelux, in January, with a view to both supporting the move and giving enthusiasts and entrepreneurs the chance to take home a piece of the brand’s history.
Online retailer and wholesaler of rare and limited whiskies, Must Have Malts, has emerged as the largest single acquirer of the distillery’s remaining whisky stock, snapping up more than 53% of the total volume.
The acquisition represents a long-term safekeeping strategy by the Utrecht-based retailer to refine and manage the release of the distillery’s final grain whisky stocks.
“When we noticed them coming to auction on a cask-by-cask basis, we were afraid that this Dutch legacy would get split up and disappear silently, as if it had never existed in the first place”, said Alwin Kuiken, co-founder of Must Have Malts. “That’s why we placed a bid on these casks. We approach the acquisition as a long-term safekeeping of Dutch whisky heritage. Our goal is to refine and release them with patience and precision, to ensure that the Hooghoudt flavour profile will be remembered for decades to come.”
All of the acquired casks contain single grain whisky aged between three and 29 years, matured in oloroso and Pedro Ximénez Sherry casks.
The liquid in the oldest cask, if bottled today, would be the oldest Dutch whisky ever released.
The casks have matured in an ‘unusually dry’ warehouse, where nearly half the original content has evaporated over three decades. Alcohol strength in some cases has risen by more than 15 percentage points. Such behaviour is rare in northern Europe and more reminiscent of extreme environments seen in Kentucky or India.
Billy Walker, a leading figure in the world of single malt whisky, selected the oldest casks used for Hooghoudt’s maturation programme in the 1990s.
Nearly three decades after selecting the casks, Walker tasted samples of the Hooghoudt whiskies. He describes the spirit as powerful and distinctive, but noted that its journey was not yet complete due to the dry storage conditions, which had diminished some of the depth one would expect after such a long maturation.
His recommendation was therefore to age for an additional six to 12 months in fresh American oak to restore balance and enhance roundness.
Must Have Malts will initiate a controlled finishing trial in line with this recommendation, after which Walker will re-evaluate the results.
In accordance with regulatory conditions, the Hooghoudt name will not be used commercially in future releases. However, provenance will be communicated transparently within applicable legal frameworks.
Related news
