The Duchess

Our Philosophy

The Duchess stands for honesty and quality. We believe in the purity of the spirit and expression of the cask. Like a beautiful Van Gogh painting, you don't add any colour, you don't need to cut it up so you can get more paintings out of it, you just need to frame it in the most befitting way and make sure the whole world can enjoy the beauty of it.

We believe that both whisky and rum hold great similarities with the finest pieces of art. We try to capture the spirits we are sure the afficionado's are going to love, simply because we love them. Every cask has a story and its own character. Capturing this essence into a bottle often requires for us to not intervene and to be patient until the spirit has reached its full potential. Only with time, every release of The Duchess is something that stands on its own as an autonomous piece of art. This is why we dedicate ourselves to three key values:
No Additives | No Colouring | Non-Chill filtered

Our Story

It was 2014 when Frank Valkenhoff and Nils van Rijn, two colleagues and passionate whisky lovers, organized a whisky tasting. Over a dram they discussed how difficult it was to really find the exceptional bottlings, and how the focus seemed to be more towards commercial releases rather than the releases made for the real whisky nerds. An idea grew, and it wasn't long before they requested fifty different samples and The Duchess was created.

What started with fifty samples quickly set the tone for our extremely high demands. Only two of these samples were good enough for us, and after some more ageing and finishing on sherry, in 2016 we had our first release of a 25 year old Ardbeg and later a 24 years old Auchentoshan.

It was around 2016 when we started really trying the different single cask rums and getting familiar with the different styles. We were right to react at that very instant, because the popularity of Rum grew exponential right after we secured our first couple of casks. The first - back then still experimental - release was the 19 years old Bellevue. Especially among the whisky drinkers this rum was a big hit. Complex, layered and it just had that something, that funkiness we came to love so much.

Our Team

FRANK VALKENHOFF

Nearly all his life, Frank has been working with fine wines, whiskies and rums and as a certified wine expert, he has dedicated his life to aromas, flavours and high-quality drinks. Owning a store in Bussum, Frank is in touch daily with customers, whisky and rum lovers and of course the latest developments in the drinks business.
"It is always amazing if you can share something you truly love, and with The Duchess we have been given exactly that chance! Whenever there is spirit that has that something special, that has that complexity or potential, I always just want to bottle my enthousiasm and share it with everybody who enters my store."
Frank approaches every release with a keen eye for detail.

NILS VAN RIJN

The key player to maintain our level of quality is the expertise and unending knowledge of Nils. In his role as cask manager, he regularly tastes the available stock and closely monitors the moment a spirit reaches perfection in its ageing process.
Starting at a young age, Nils had a fascination for whisky and other spirits of high quality. While his friends were having beers, Nils would indulge in the complexity of a fine single malt. Later on he decided to make a carreer out of his passion. He went to Springbank to learn more about the process, worked alongside big names from Scotland and the Dutch whisky industry and sampled thousends of unique whiskies, further developing his aptitude for aroma's and flavours.

Despite becoming engulfed in the professional world of whisky, he never lost his passion.
"I want people to love the drink just as much as I do. If we were in it for the money, we’d be releasing many more casks, but we don’t like to work that way. The Duchess is all about true passion for the drink and genuinely releasing good stuff."