Auchroisk 24 Years Old 1990 Cask #21750 (Morrison and MacKay)

Bottled by Morrison and MacKay in 2015 as a 24 year old single cask release, drawn from cask 21750 of 1990 vintage Auchroisk with 273 bottles distributed to the German market at cask strength of 52.9%. 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 1990 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 four 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. Holding 52.9% across more than two decades indicates a tight cask with steady evaporative loss, and tertiary stage ester transformation layers polished fruit over the spirit's signature light, ester forward profile.