North Port 27 Years Old 1981 Cask #779 (Duncan Taylor)

Bottled by Duncan Taylor from a single ex-Bourbon cask numbered 779, this 27 year old captures a 1981 vintage in an outturn of 396 bottles. The spirit was distilled at North Port in Brechin, Angus, the Highland distillery the Guthrie family founded in 1820 and DCL closed in 1983, with 1981 falling in its final couple of working years before the plant fell silent for good.

Twenty seven years in a single ex-Bourbon barrel have carried the light, dry spirit into deep oxidative maturity. The fruit has baked down and a waxy richness built up, the cask now fully expressed, the strength gently easing as a small share of the barrel is lost to evaporation with every passing year in the warehouse. Single barrel ageing of this kind preserves the quirks of one cask rather than blending them away, so the result is very much its own whisky.

Bottled at 56.5%, it still carries plenty of power. The wood lends vanilla as lignin turns to vanillin, a coconut note from the oak lactones, and slow oxidation a beeswax depth over North Port's dry orchard fruit and faint juniper lift. The tannins are firm but clean and the finish runs long, a single cask record of a Highland distillery demolished in the 1990s.