Auchroisk 17 Years Old 1997 Cask #CM 209 (The House of MacDuff)

Bottled by The House of MacDuff in 2014 as a 17 year old single cask release, drawn from cask CM 209 of 1997 vintage Auchroisk with 280 bottles distributed to the Belgian market at cask strength of 53%. The House of MacDuff is the independent bottler behind the Golden Cask range, with focus on single cask releases at natural strength selected from across Scottish distilleries.

Distilled in 1997 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.

Seventeen years in temperate Speyside warehousing drove measured 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 53% across nearly two decades indicates a moderately tight cask with steady evaporative loss, and continued ester transformation layers polished fruit over the spirit's signature light, ester forward profile.