5 distilleries worth visiting you might not have thought of

Visiting Distilleries...

It's a hobby of mine. I've been around 130 or so and all the visits have been fun. That's how it is with hobbies. Others say, have you seen one then you have seen them all. Obviously I don't agree :-)

Some distilleries are known for their nice visitor centres, others for great tours or fantastic scenery. When people recommend distilleries to visit it is very often the same names that pop up. And I don't disagree.

But here is five distilleries that I found particular interesting and they are not mentionend that often compared to others. So if you have seen a lot or a few distilleries, here is 5 that might have something to offer.


1. Four Roses Warehouses

Four Roses warehouses and Four Roses distillery are located 50 miles apart. The distillery offer two different tours, the warehouse tour needs an appointment first

It's called the Warehouse and Bottling facility. Four Roses Warehouses are unusual for Kentucky as they are single story warehouses. Opposed to the "standard" multi story warehouses. There is around 20 warehouses and a bottling facility on the site. You get inside one or two of the warehouses and then you get to the bottling facility where barrels are emptied, vatted and then bottled. The day we visitied they were doing single barrels. It's a great operation to watch and first hand see the barrels dumped.

Getting ready to empty this

2. Indian Creek Distillery

Indian Creek distillery is a revival of a distillery that has been silent since 1920. It was a smaller farm distillery that was forced to close when prohibition hit in 1920. The distillery was founded by Elias Staley around 1826 and run for almost a century until 1920 (with a break or two). Now 6th generation on the Staley farm, Melissa and Joe Duer has reinstalled the old original stills in the original setup and has started producing whiskey again. Using original recipe involving rye, barley, corn and hops and hickory wood for maturation (or partly) this distillery is probably so traditional that modern understanding and rules of whiskey has surpassed them in the century that has passed. It's a very nice place to visit and the Duer's has done a great job resurrecting this distillery, and visiting is a bit like going back in history.

http://www.staleymillfarmanddistillery.com/distillery.htm

Staley farm stills

3. Deanston

If you have visited distilleries in Scotland and want to see a distillery that is a bit different than the rest I recommend Deanston near Doune Castle. It's an old cotton mill that after 180 years was transformed into a distillery in the 60's. It is beautifully located on the bank of the river Teith. The whole distillery is located inside one building which is somewhat unusual as warehouses are normally set aside the rest of the distillery. The place has an interesting story and it's one of my favourite tours. After the tours there is a chance to taste the great whisky from the distillery. The destillery is powered by it's own water turbines, that produces enough power to also supply the nearby village with power (or used to). The giant turbines is an unusual sight for a whisky tourists. When "The Danish Drinking Team" group of 8, visited Scotland and around 10-12 distilleries in May this year, Deanston that was most popular amongst the bottle shoppers amongst us!

Deanston Still Room

4. Tomatin

An interesting distillery to visit in the scottish Highland. It used to be biggest distillery in Scotland, but the production has been scaled down to around 50% of what it once was. It used to run two mashtuns, and now the redundant mashtun has become a visitor attraction in itself. The distillery itself is a small village, quite isolated up in the Highlands between Inverness and Speyside, just on the A9. When entering through the narrow tunnel under the railway, you are met by giant warehouses reminding me of  Kentucky, if it wasn't for the heather highland surroundings. The place also have a visitor centre and bottle your own facility

Climb inside a mashtun at Tomatin

4. Yoichi

I covered my recent visit to Yoichi in another blog post here. This is exactly how it should be to visit a distillery. Everything was in japanese though, but maybe I should have learned that before I went :-)

Tasting Bar Yoichi Distillery

Next list will be: 7 of my favourite whiskybooks

Ardmore, Tomatin and Bunnahabhain distilled in the early 90's

A set of short reviews

1. Ardmore 1992 Archives 20yo 48.6%
Cask 4764. Distilled June 1992, bottled June 2012

Nose: Nutty and peaty

Palate: Typical Ardmore, with a strong earthy peat, dry spicyness and some fruityness

Finish: Medium, with a fruity kick

A nice and wellbalanced whisky. Essential Ardmore and very drinkable. Nuts, fruits and peat

Rating 87/100

2. Tomatin 1992 20yo 53.9% 

Cask 31497, Oloroso sherry hogshead

Nose : Very fruity. Dried fruits. Mixed with a hint of rubber, raisins

Palate: oily, licorice, some rubber, this is a sherry bomb, with a dark expression. It's almost like licking a stick of licorice wood dipped in sherry. The rubber texture soons fades away and an explosion of dark dried fruits appear. And then a hint of vanilla. One for the sherryfans, and beware if you have rubber issues

Finish: Long 

Sherry Bomb. I like the long finish when the rubber has gone away. Melted raisins

Rating 87/100

Bunnahabhain 1990 Archives 21yo 52.3%

Cask 14. Distilled March 1990, bottled December 2012

Pouring this I realise this is hard to drink after the Tomatin which was just so intense. Concentration is needed. Well, I am used to it :-)

Nose: Spiced up laidback sherryness. This is very nice 

Palate: Dry, aged sherry, but still powerful. This cask tastes something mid between a firstfill and a refill.  Refill sherry is more suitable for long time maturations as the wood is a tad more gentle to the whisky and doesn't kill it. This is a perfect virtual hybrid, where you still get the ex-sherry intensity and the well aged whisky that still thrives and is not hidden by the sherry. There is a lot in whisky that reminds me of 30+ refill sherries with some strong elements added from a fresh sherry (it IS a fresh sherry cask). Dried fruits, licorise, spices 

Finish: Medium

Sherryfan: This is a bottle you wished you bought

Rating 89/100

Spirit of Speyside 2013 - part 4

This is a holiday report

Monday morning our group took a detour out of Speyside and visited Tomatin Distillery. We were welcomed by distillery genereral manager Graham Eunson, who took us around the distillery. 

Tomatin might not be the most beautiful distillery in Scotland, but it has one of the most interesting tours. The giant warehouses when you enter the distillery grounds under the too small railway-bridge is almost breathtaking. The distillery has a feature I haven't seen in any other distillery. Back in the 70's, Tomatin had 23 stills and 2 mash-tuns, and were more like a twin distillery, two almost identical distilleries in the same building. After 1980 some of the stills were cut down and one of the mashtuns became redundant. It is now set up for display for people taking tours. There is a big hole in the side so you can actually climb inside to touch and see how a mashtun is laid out and works

Climb inside a mashtun at Tomatin

Tomatin Spirit Still

The stills at Tomatin has a peculiar setup. The wash and the beer stills are identical. The spirit safe is placed beneath the stills and the top of the stills are out of sight. So no windows on the washstills as you can't see them from the spirit safe anyway. From below, the stillman can ring a bell-like string to check the sound of the washstills and the corresponding head of the boiling wash.

Tomatin also features a small cooperage for repairing casks.

Casks ready to be filled

After the tour we had a tasting of the Tomatin core range, one of the strongest core ranges in the industry. Graham told us that it was the 18yo that convinced him to move to Tomatin. I totally agree, the 18yo was the eye openener for me as well. A bottle that draw my attention to this distillery. We had a wee taste of the new Legacy, which is a NAS Tomatin. It is a mix of ex-bourbon and virgin oak matured Tomatin. This is a very good complement to the core range. We also had a cask sample of a 6yo virgin oak matured Tomatin. Give me some of that please! That was delicious. Fresh, crispy, vanilla and minty

Thanks to Jennifer from Tomatin for arranging the tour and to Graham for taking the time to show us around. 

After the tour we drove back to Speyside, having lunch in Muckrach Lodge near Dulnain Bridge on the way, it's a fantastic restaurant and absolutely worth a big detour.

Muckrach

Best lambchops I had in my life

Returning to Dufftown we had a couple of tasting left. The two tastings I had the biggest expectations for on the whole festival. And I wasn't dissapointed. These two tastings are essentials of why it's worth coming to Dufftown and Spirit of Speyside. The first tasting was presented by Donald Colville, Diageo's Global Brand Ambassador who brought some special treats for us. Donald, being a participator himself for many years, new enough about the festival to satisfy his customers for sure.

Mortlach SoS 2013 bottling

Donald served the following for us

Mortlach SoS 2013 festival bottling

Cragganmore 21yo 2010

Inchgower Rare Malt 27yo 1976

Talisker Storm

Talisker Port Ruighe

Caol Ila Feis Ile 2010

Way to go! Donald, 3 very new releases and 3 hard to find limited releases.

The Danish Drinking Team are tough to beat as we allready had a sample of the Inchgower in our cottage :-)

After this we had a wee break, which as usual was spent in the Royal Oak (They ran out of beer!).

The next tasting was a world premier, or something like that, of the new Cadenhead range. Cadenhead are going back to dumpy bottles and everybody knows that dumpy Cadenheads taste really good so I think it's a very clever decisison...

The tasting was presented by Mark Watt, who in an earlier life had hosted tastings for another company that always were among my favourite events. I wasn't dissapointed this year. From what we tasted the excellent Cadenhead range is getting even better

Look out for:

Craigellachie 1994

Camenronbridge 1989

Creations 20yo Blend 

Glenlivet-Minmore 1970 (Why not Glenlivet-glenlivet ?)

Highland Park 1988

Bowmore 1998

After this we went to the dram party at the Whiskyshop Dufftown which is the perfect end to a great festival, it's a mini fair with last chances for some purchases, last chance to taste some whisky and talk to the other festival goers, at lot of usual suspects as always.

Sleepy tuesday morning in Dufftown

  

Tomatin 40yo

Tomatin 40yo 42.9%
Distilled 17 May 1967, bottled 2 September 2007

A vatting of 7 hogsheads

Nose: fresh tropical fruits, some candied sweetness. You know instantly you are nosing and old and delicate whisky. Faintest hint of peat, oriental spices, passion fruit mixed with pineapple

Palate : Spicy woods, delicate fruitness, feel-good old whisky

Finish : Medium and prickly

Rating 90/100

This is a very typical low strength old whisky. With the final strength being 42.9% I wonder what the lowest strength cask going into this were

Dalwhinnie is a Speysider!!

Now what is Speyside ??

It's a whiskyregion. In Scotland. Some people don't like whiskyregions for various reasons, and those "some people" sometimes includes me. But that's not what I want to discuss in this post. 

Some companies market their whiskies based on whisky regions. Diageo's Classic malts is a good example of this. A few years back they had the regions of Speyside, Islay, Islands, Highland, Lowland and also West Highland if I remember correctly. For a lot of us this was our first encounter with whisky regions. Or maybe it was Tesco's line of whiskies labeled with similar regions. 

But these "regions" are made up by the companies that is trying to sell whisky to us. Nothing wrong with that. But Diageo is such a big company with so much whisky and so many distilleries that what they do and say is sometimes believed to be how things are. But no. Their regions is just something they made up to help market their whisky. Nothing wrong with that, and it's not like it doesn't make any sense what they do.

But what is this thing called Speyside? Maybe it's the whisky distilleries that are situated on the banks of the river Spey? No. It's not that simple.

Maybe it's the distilleries that lies in the watershed of the river Spey? This would include the rivers, streams, burns and glens running into Spey. Like Livet and Fiddich to mention a couple of wellknowns.

No, it's not like that either. Far too simple...

A lot of distilleries that are Speysiders are on the banks of Lossie, Findhorn and Isla. Confusing?. And Isla runs into Deveron which has distilleries on it's bank that are NOT Speysiders

Confused? I was! I am too focused on rivers. Speyside has nothing to do with rivers.

I headed over to SWA's website. SWA is Scottish Whisky Association. They must know what is where in Scotland. They say this:

The current UK legislation relating specifically to Scotch Whisky is The Scotch Whisky Regulations 2009. The Regulations govern the production, labelling, and presentation of Scotch Whisky.

So I continued over to the The Scotch Whisky Regulations 2009. You might have heard about them before. They are the ones that wants us to drink blended malt.

The Scotch Whisky Regulations 2009 Chapter 10 says :

**************************************

Locality and region geographical indications...

(5) The protected localities are—

(a)“Campbeltown”, comprising the South Kintyre ward of the Argyll and Bute Council as that ward is constituted in the Argyll and Bute (Electoral Arrangements) Order 2006(1); and

(b)“Islay”, comprising the Isle of Islay in Argyll.

(6) The protected regions are—

(a)“Highland”, comprising that part of Scotland that is north of the line dividing the Highland region from the Lowland region;

(b)“Lowland”, comprising that part of Scotland that is south of the line dividing the Highland region from the Lowland region; and

(c)“Speyside”, comprising—

(i)the wards of Buckie, Elgin City North, Elgin City South, Fochabers Lhanbryde, Forres, Heldon and Laich, Keith and Cullen and Speyside Glenlivet of the Moray Council as those wards are constituted in the Moray (Electoral Arrangements) Order 2006(2); and

(ii)the Badenoch and Strathspey ward of the Highland Council as that ward is constituted in the Highland (Electoral Arrangements) Order 2006(3).

**************************************

Now this is the protected regions and localities. This basically just means that a distillery has to be on Islay to label itself as "Islay Whisky". And that a distillery has to be in Speyside to label itself as "Speyside Single Malt Whisky". And it also defines these regions and localities. Later in chapter 10 the division line between Lowland and Highland is exactly defined as well. 

The region "Islands" is not mentioned. Any Scotch whisky could label themself as "Island Whisky" if they want to. All of Scotland is on an island in case you forgot :-)

And here the region Speyside is exactly defined as Moray and the "Badenoch and Strathspey" ward in the Highlands

End of story. This is Speyside. When it comes to whisky. All of Speyside is located within the Highland protected region, so it's totally legal for a Speyside distillery to label themself as Highland. Macallan does it. Legal yes, but confusing. It's hard to be more Speyside geographically than Macallan

End of story. No more confusion. 

I had to look on my google maps of distilleries : http://danishwhiskyblog.blogspot.dk/2010/04/google-maps-of-all-whiskydistilleries.html

I wanted to know which distilleries were actually located in the Badenoch and Strathspey ward.

Tormore. check

Balmenach. check

Speyside. check (Some one with a sense of humor decided to name his distillery "Speyside". Label it as Highland Malt, and then locate it far away from anything else considered Speyside whiskyregion. You have to be a Scott to have that kind of humor)

That's it. Wait. There's one more. 

Dalwhinnie. check. Dalwhinnie is a Speysider. End of story. It's located far up the mountains, far to the south, almost in Perth. It's a shorter distance to Perth than to Elgin from Dalwhinnie. Many consider Elgin the capital of Speyside. I could agree with that. People in Dufftown might not, but  it's also a shorter distance to Perth than to Dufftown from Dalwhinnie. Elgin is on the river Lossie by the way :-)

Dalwhinnie is a Speysider. I see. Interesting. It's in the watershed of Speyside as the river Truim runs north into the river Spey

Badenoch and Strathspey

Here's a few other borderliners :

Tomatin is not, nor is Glenglassaugh. Nor Glendronach. Neither Ardmore

Inchgower is a Speysider. So is AnCnoc. (Knockdhu)

Knockdhu considers and labels themselfs as Highland. Which is not wrong. But as the distillery is located in the Keith and Cullen ward in Moray, it's a Speysider!

All this geography can be very hard to grasp. To help us, SWA made this map:

http://www.scotch-whisky.org.uk/understanding-scotch/whisky-regions-tours/

It shows the regions and localities. You shouldn't be confused anymore now. Until You locate Tomatin on their map that is:-)

Dalwhinnie

Speyside has around 50 working distilleries. Also quite a few mothballed, demolished and silent distilleries, which whiskies are still available out there. This makes Speyside the main whisky producing region of the world!!. It's a rather small area located between Inverness and Aberdeen in the northern part of Scotland

..between Inverness, Perth, and Aberdeen. sorry..

Whisky Agency

Whisky Agency is a german independent bottler associated with the organisers of The Limburg Whisky Fair, one of the best whisky weekends out there.

1. Tomatin 34yo 1976 51.2% Liquid Sun
Bottled 2011. Matured in a sherry butt. 272 bottles

Nose : Sweet sherry wine, with a bit of wood

Palate : Very fruity sherried, and quite woody. Plums, vanilla

Finish: Medium-long and woody

Rating 85

Comment : I can't help wondering how much sherry they forgot in the cask before filling it with newmake. This fruityness is very sweet and fresh, and much more plums than dried fruits a lá raisins. This is a sherry monster, and if you like sherry and sherried whisky, you will like this. I think it's a bit too much. But behind all the pieces of fruits floating down the glass instead of legs, there is some depths to explore. Give it time and it develops in the glass!

2. Ardmore 19yo 1992 49.9% Liquid Sun
Bottled in 2011. Matured in a bourbon barrel. Heavily peated. 202 bottles.

Nose :  ash and fruits. This is a very fruity

Palate : A nixe mix of spice, peat and fruits (sweet apples and pears) and dry ash

Finish : Medium-long and the peat lingers

Rating 88

Comment : When you aim for a bottle of Ardmore this is exactly what you hope to get. A nice mix of peat and a fruity whisky typical for speyside. And a peated whisky benefits a lot from when you can taste the age kicking in

3. Laphroaig 13yo 1998 53.3% Liquid Library
Sample

Nose: Classic Laproaig how it should be. Clean and simple. Peat, vanilla, and a bit of citrus and apples

Palate: A clear follow up to the nose. Very peaty, but you expect that. Dry and the fruit is just detectable

Finish Short-medium

Rating 86

A very sherried whisky for the ultra sherry fans, a very peaty whisky for the peatheads, and a nice peated speysider, which is also for the peatheads...

DMWA, Danish Malt Whisky Academy is the danish importer of these bottlings.

My bang for the bucks whiskies

If you have been into whisky for a bit and think you are well acquainted with the front row at your local supermarket and ready to venture into new territories, things can be a bit of a jungle. The amount of bottlings out there these days is high. Wonderfully high. There's more to the world of whisky than top brands like Glenfiddich, Highland  Park, Glenlivet and Macallan.Nothing wrong with those I will say before going on.

Amongst bloggers and in forums it's always a reoccuring subject to name cheap whiskies, which is looked upon as great value for money. Who isn't interested in good deal ?

Here's MY list of a set of whiskies, which might not be the cheapest whiskies around, but I think you won't get better value for money than these. I don't think it's a coincidince that 9/10 of these are bottled at 46+ ABV, as my personal preference is for unchillfiltered, not watered down whiskies

Deanston 12yo, 46.3%
The new revatted, unchillfiltered version of Deanston, and what a comeback. Creamy, delicious single malt. Available for less than 30£

Deanston mini

Old Pulteney WK499
Available in selected airports World of Whiskies shops...Heathrow and Edinburgh from personal experience. I have seen this at 50£ for 2 1liter bottlings making this the best deal in whisky I have ever seen. It's a NAS Old Pulteney cask strength in a typical style of the distillery. Seaside vanilla and mint!

Balvenie 15yo Single Barrel 47.8%
Cask variation will of course be there, but these are typical delicious ex-bourbon vanilla whisky. Yum Yum. Not more than fortysomething quids usually

Tomatin 18yo 46%
Another solid comeback and a living proof that whisky at 46% just is better. One of my favourites at the whisky fringe 2009

Amrut Fusion 50%
First time I got this blind I guessed it as 20+ year old lightly peated speysider. Nuff said

Back label of Amrut, bottle almost gone

Glenburgie 10yo Gordon and MacPhail 40%
Sometimes seen at below 20£ on offer in UK, and below 300Dkr as standard price in Denmark, this is a delicious continous bottling from Gordon and MacPhails. It has got special touch that I often find in G and M sherry casked whiskies

Bladnoch Forum Bottlings
Apart from their own whisky, Raymond bottles a big selection of other distilleries. Bladnoch Forum bottlings is probably the greatest value for money whiskies around! Even includes Bladnoch whisky itself now and again.

Bladnoch Forum Bottling example : Cambus Grain 

Lagavulin 12yo Cask Strength
Bottled at cask strength and 12yo this is one of my favourite Islays. 44£ in Edinburgh airport

Tweeddale blend 46%/ Black Bull 12yo
A pair of excellent delicious blends and delightful newcomers to the whiskymarket. And it's great to see a blend that's not watered down to 40%. Less than 30£

Aberlour A'bunadh
Legendary small batch NAS cask strength fullsherried whiskies. Beware, there can be some batch variations

And here is one that you might have missed.

Arran Peacock
This was out 1½ year ago and sold out most places. Still available at Juul's in Copenhagen. Voted whisky of the year 2009 by whiskywhiskywhisky.com. One of my favourite whiskies

Distilleries improved

We all have our favourite distilleries, well most of us I guess. We also have some distilleries we have some problem getting along with. Well I do...or did

Things change. A distillery might change their production, or the company owning them might change their bottling style, that can be a change in age, a new bottling range, alcoholpercentage, they might drop chillfiltering their whiskies, or just vat different types of casks together. And my palate changes as well. First time someone gave me a Laphroaig I thought it was the worst thing I ever tasted..that opinion changed fast.

Here's a list of some whiskies which I used to find very bad, just bad, or just plain boring. Bad whisky is often due to some kind of fault in the production, boring whisky can be caused by bottling from casks thats too plain, that is casks that haven't given as much to the whisky as they should, maybe they have been used too many times.

1. Bowmore
Bowmore bottles some fantastic stuff, but in the eighties, something went wrong at the distillery. A lot of bottlings from this era is too soapy and too floral. Any soap is too soapy. These flaws goes for both OB's (The distillery's own bottlings) and IB's (Independant bottlings). This became so bad, a PLOWED Bowmore fan coined the tasting note FWP : French Whore Perfume to describe his experiences with Bowmore. Employess associated with the distillery usually denied this, and some even took offense (You're just a of self-styled connoisseurs was a reply to above when he questioned the distillery, self-styled whisky connoisseurs is now the offficial PLOWED logo)
Well Bowmore isn't like that anymore. I did avoid them for something like a 5 year period, but visiting them in 2007 and trying a few of their drams made me realise that this distillery was worthy again. Avoid anything disitilled before 1994 and after 1979 just to be safe :-)
It must be a company flaw as I have experienced the same flaws in Glen Garioch occasionally and Auchentoshan rarely. Visiting Auchentoshan in 2007 I mentioned this to one of their staff and it was quite entertaining watching this poor lad pretending he never heard about it before
Anyhoo, its 3 great distilleries that has overcome these troubles

2. Isle of Jura
I went to Islay in 2001 and at a bar I ordered the 10, 16 and 21 if my memory is correct. They all tasted of sour socks to me, really really bad. I'd actually revisited these bottlings and other Juras occasionally, the 10 at Fringe 2009 and it was still the same. I must have been complaining too much about Jura, to such an extent, that several of my friends has caught me praising Jura's when serving them blind to me, much to the fun of the donator. So therre is good Jura around. I've tried good Jura at SMWS (better than good actually, it was brilliant). At the entrance to a whiskyfair in Hadsten, Denmark 2009, the welcome dram was a 10yo Jura from Chieftain's, another brilliant bottling. Recently the distillery has changed their line, added some peated malts to their vattings etc.. I like the Superstition and its on my to-do list to try their new bottlings, especially their boutique barrel series which have been praised to me by trusted whisky friends

3. Tobermory/Ledaig
The products from this distillery gave me similar troubles as Jura. Sour socks whisky. I tried some awesome old bottlings, but the general production just seemed bad from one end to the other. Well that didn't stop me visiting the distillery last year. Mull is a fantastic Island and Tobermory (the town) is one of the most picturesque villages in Scotland. At the distillery I had the pleasure of getting spotted by the guide showing us around. Two friends and I, who was on the tour, and never asked a question still got pulled aside from the rest of the group when we enjoyed our compulsary dram after the tour and offered a few more. Somehow we looked like people who like whisky :-)
We had the pleasure, and it WAS a great pleasure, to try their new Ledaig and new Tobermory, both bottled at 46.3%. Nothing wrong with any of these, which was a bit of surprise to me. I gently commented that this was a lot better than what I remembered coming out from the distillery. The guide straight away admitted that the quality of their whiskies had improved and that it used to be feinty. No denials here
Well - there's another distillery for you all to go out and try again.
The same Company also relaunched Deanston at 46.3%. I didn't find the old version of Deanston flawed, just pretty boring. The new version is a lot better

5 years ago I went through a few whiskybooks, magazines and online blogs and made a comparison of ratings of standard bottlings and took an average. The result can be seen here :

http://www.whiskynyt.dk/index.php?name=PNphpBB2&file=viewtopic&t=745

The post is in danish, but download the xls-document for the result, here's a key to the columns :
1st column is Jim Murray's Bible 
2nd column is MM Matrix 
3rd column is Whisky Magazine, recalculated 
4th colum is  Jacksons Companion
5th column is an average


As you can see Deanston is last. That wouldn't be the case with bottling available today 


4. Tomatin, Balblair, BenRiach, Imperial and others


Disitilleries can reinvent themselves or get some new owners that cares a bit more about the bottlings coming out. Or an independant bottler might put a distillery on the map

First time I tried the above malts it was something I drank and forgot about 5 seconds later. The distillery bottlings weren't anything worth remembering


Well Tomatin decided to revat their 12, 15 and 18 and going 46 on the last two. Well what a pleasant surprise. Going straight from below average to one of the best OB ranges available

My collection of 18yo Tomatins. Old and new OB's to the left

Balblair relaunched their malts as vintages around 2006 and what an improvement. Another great set of OB's


BenRiach had a change of owners. Billy Walker has been putting out one excellent bottling after the other ever since (except the Birnie Moss..but that wasn't even released as a BenRiach so I suspect they didn't fancy it that much themselves either)


Imperial. Anyone ever paid any notice to this ?. Well, Duncan Taylor did. They hoped they could purchase the distillery, which failed, but the sale was so close to coming through, they actually stocked up on a lot of Imperial Casks. And a lot of the stuff they bottled from Imperial the last couple of years has been awesome. 2nd distillery Duncan Taylor put on the map for me, first was Caperdonich.


5. Arran
Arran bottles a lot and they did so since their malt was 3 years old. Most of this wasn't very good in my opinion. A lot of the terribleness has been hidden by finishes, well, in my case, as I quite often don't like the winery taste of finishes it has been double faulted. I know others liked this, but whisky won't get worse than the Arran Champagne finish.

Arran Peacock and Arran Rowan Tree

Well things are changing. Arran is a young distillery, and some distilleries just need some years in casks before they start to work. As Arran has started bottling whisky 12years and older, it is the ugly duckling turning into a swan peacock. Recent bottlings has been very good. The 12yo OB is a huge huge improvement to the 10yo (look out for a 14yo coming out soon). As well as some excellent single cask bottlings, both from ex-sherry and ex-bourbon casks I do regard The Arran Peacock as one of the best bottlings of whisky ever bottled in it's catagory (Single Malt, several casks - around 12yo)


So, it might be time to retry some of the distilleries you abandoned years ago ?