Auchentoshan Individual Cask Bottling 17 Years Old 1987

Bottled by Auchentoshan as part of the Individual Cask Bottling range from cask 1659 of 1987 vintage stock, with 552 bottles drawn at high cask strength of 61.5% for the Belgian market. The Individual Cask Bottling programme was the distillery's first dedicated single cask range, presenting cask by cask releases from the long matured archive at Dalmuir.

Distilled in 1987 from 100% unpeated malted barley with Loch Cochno water from the Kilpatrick Hills, the wash was fermented around 62 hours across Douglas fir and stainless steel washbacks before triple distillation. Auchentoshan runs every drop through three copper pot stills, with the intermediate and spirit stages collecting at around 81% ABV. The extra copper contact strips sulphur compounds and fusel oils while concentrating ethyl hexanoate, isoamyl acetate, and other light esters, giving a clean spirit base filled into a single Oloroso sherry cask.

Seventeen years in European oak Oloroso conditions drove deep sherry character into the lighter triple distilled base. Ellagitannins and gallic acid from the European oak build dried walnut and grip, while oxidative aldehydes including acetaldehyde and syringaldehyde develop nutty, leathery rancio. Fermentation derived sotolon adds dried fig and curry leaf, with glycerol concentration lending body, integrated with the spirit's underlying citrus and almond core at 61.5%.