dalmore 20 year old

dalmore 20 year old

• Highland Single Malt Scotch Whisky
• Distillery Bottling

75cl / 43%

So, A delightful old bottling of Dalmore at 20 years old. This was bottled in the 1970s, not long after the distillery had just been purchased by Whyte & Mackay.

Nose: very special. Lots of roasted coffee beans and fresh herbs (dill, celery). Gets then quite meaty (smoked ham, beef bouillon). Some soy sauce too… Mouth: very medicinal, with lots of wax, old turpentine, natural varnish, camphor. The finish is very long, getting just a little bitter. Another blast from the past.

The whiskey has an absolutely delicious flavor profile that has some complexity to it, and it makes for a great sipping spirit.

The Dalmore Distillery was established in 1893 by a Scottish entrepreneur named Alexander Matheson. Located in a large meadowland (the Scottish word for big meadowland being “dalmore” — hence, where the distillery derives its name) north of Inverness and adjacent to the Cromarty Firth, the location was ideal for whiskey production.

After 28 years of production, Alexander decide that it was time to move on and started looking for new owners. The two individuals who eventually purchase the distillery were Andrew and Charles Mackenzie, members of the Mackenzie clan. Legend has it that in 1262 this clan had save King Alexander III of Scotland from a charging stag and, as a reward, the clan had been given lands and the right to use the 12 pointe Royal Stag as their emblem. Since the purchase of the distillery by the Mackenzies, that same stag emblem has adorned every bottle of whiskey that the Dalmore distillery produce.

Things ran fairly smoothly for the family run distillery until 1917. With the First World War raging in Europe, the Royal Navy decided to use the remote firth to start producing deep sea naval mines for the war effort. This would have a disastrous effect in 1920 when the Royal Navy accidentally scored a direct hit on the distillery with one of those mines, with the resulting explosion destroying much of it and lighting what was left on fire.