Blair Athol 21 Year Old Douglas Laing Old Particular 1998 Single Sherry Cask DL13063 (2019) 70cl

Blair Athol 21 Year Old Douglas Laing Old Particular 1998 Single Sherry Cask DL13063 (2019) 70cl

1 of 167 bottles from a Sherry Butt.

Distilled in March 1998 and bottled in March 2019. Glorious dark red colour having taken a lot of the wood in this particularly well chosen cask.

Some of the best character of the Blair Athol spirit is drawn out after maturation in sherry casks. This is a sherry bomb and a half!

About Blair Athol

A member of the ‘nutty-spicy’ camp which defined the old Bell’s distilleries, Blair Athol takes the first part of the descriptor to its boldest expression. Cloudy worts and a short fermentation time give the nutty base, but it is distillation which adds real weight to the distillate. A controlled level of solids coming across in the wash still add a rich, deep, malt-loaf character to the new make. It is this character which allows it to show so well in ex-Sherry, although for blending purposes the majority of the make is destined for ex-Bourbon.

The central Perthshire town of Pitlochry sits on the banks of the River Tay and has had a distillery since 1798, making its plant one of the oldest legal whisky-making sites in Scotland. The original distillery was named Aldour after the burn which supplied it with process water, but changed its name to Blair Athol [after a village seven miles to the north] in 1825. This could conceivably have been to sweeten the Duke of Athol who owned the land

It became part of the Peter Mackenzie blending house in 1886, but like many distilleries suffered during the economic troubles of the 1930s and fell silent between 1932 and 1949. In the interim period however Mackenzie (and its estate, which also included Dufftown distillery) had been bought by Perth-based blender, Arthur Bell & Sons.

By the 1970s, Bell’s was being built into the UK’s top-selling blended Scotch and, as a result, Blair Athol was doubled in capacity. Guinness (which bought Bell’s in 1985, and after further mergers evolved into Diageo) opened a visitor’s centre in 1987.

In an attempt to tap into the then infant single malt market, Bell’s bottled it as an eight-year-old in the 1980s, but in the Diageo era it has only appeared as a member of the Flora & Fauna range (at 12 years of age), matured in first-fill ex-Sherry casks.

TASTING NOTES

Nose: Beautifully spiced with nutmeg plus burnt orange rind and a touch of cocoa

Palate: Warming all spice, fruit cake and vanilla, stewed dark fruits

Finish: Long with malted barley, treacle toffee and toasted brioche bread (CSL)

51.7% ABV

70cl