Pittyvaich 29 Years Old 1979 Cask #5640 (Duncan Taylor)

This 29 year old comes from a 1979 vintage, one of Pittyvaich's earliest, drawn from a single ex-Bourbon cask numbered 5640 and bottled by Duncan Taylor at a natural 50.2% in an outturn of 199. As Pittyvaich only began distilling in 1975, a 1979 cask is a record of the distillery's first years, when its six stills were still settling into the make Bell's built them to produce for its blend.

A single ex-Bourbon American oak cask held the spirit for twenty nine years. By that age the whisky has reached an oxidative and evaporative maturity, the slow loss to the angel's share concentrating the liquid and easing the strength, while the refill oak preserves the light, grassy Speyside character rather than smothering it under heavy first fill extraction.

At 50.2% it is bright and waxy. Lignin breakdown gives vanilla, caramelised hemicellulose a honeyed sweetness, and the long single cask ageing lifts fresh orchard fruit and a soft cereal note over old oak. The finish is long and clean, a single cask snapshot of Pittyvaich in its earliest years, decades before the distillery fell silent. Such early casks are vanishingly rare today.