North Port 24 Years Old 1980 (Scott’s Selection)

Bottled at full strength by Scott's Selection, this 24 year old captures a 1980 vintage from North Port's closing years. The spirit comes from the Brechin distillery in Angus, founded by the Guthrie family in 1820 and shut by DCL in 1983, one of the nine plants lost in that cull and later demolished to make way for a supermarket.

Twenty four years in ex-Bourbon American oak carried the light, dry spirit into deep oxidative maturity. The fruit has baked down and a waxy weight has built up, the cask fully expressed, with the long ageing drawing out a savoury leaf of tobacco alongside the distillery's usual crisp, dry character. Scott's Selection built its name on bottling closed and quiet distilleries at natural strength, and this is a fine example of that work.

Bottled at a natural 58%, it is bold and full. Spent lignin gives vanilla through vanillin, the oak lactones lend coconut, and slow oxidation adds polished old oak and that dry tobacco depth over North Port's fruit and faint juniper edge. Water softens the strength and broadens the fruit, the finish long and dry, a Scott's Selection record of a closed Highland distillery.