Auchroisk 27 Years Old 1988 Cask #596 (Morrison and MacKay)

Bottled by Morrison and MacKay in 2015 as a 27 year old single cask release, drawn from cask 596 of 1988 vintage Auchroisk with 318 bottles distributed to the Austrian market at natural strength of 47.2%. Morrison and MacKay is the independent bottling and blending company of the Morrison family, with historic connections to Bowmore, Auchentoshan, and Glen Garioch under the former Morrison Bowmore ownership.

Distilled in 1988 at the Mulben distillery built by Justerini & Brooks in 1974, the wash was made from 100% unpeated malted barley with soft Dorie's Well water and fermented for around 53 hours in stainless steel washbacks. Auchroisk runs the spirit through four wash and four spirit stills with constricted lyne arms, encouraging high reflux that returns heavier compounds back to the pot. Shell and tube condensers give further copper contact, stripping sulphur compounds, with the spirit collected at around 70% ABV and filled into a single ex-Bourbon American oak cask.

Twenty seven years in temperate Speyside warehousing drove patient oak extraction. Vanillin from lignin breakdown gave vanilla, cis and trans oak lactones added coconut and sweet wood, and char layer interaction produced furfural with Maillard derived caramelised sugars. Settling at 47.2% reflects steady evaporative loss across the long maturation, with tertiary stage ester transformation integrating fruit and oak over the spirit's signature light, ester forward profile.