Port Dundas 46 Years Old 1973 Cask #607229 (Duncan Taylor)

From Duncan Taylor comes this Port Dundas single grain, a 46 year old grain, from 1973, drawn from cask 607229 and bottled at 56.1%. Just 90 bottles were filled. The Glasgow grain distillery Port Dundas, first run in 1811 beside the Forth and Clyde Canal in Glasgow, was one of Scotland's great grain distilleries until closed in 2010 just short of two centuries. Two fires in the early twentieth century could not halt its rise to the top.

Grain whisky like this was drawn off tall continuous column stills on wheat and malted barley, giving a soft, clean grain spirit. An Oloroso butt held it, building dried fruit and a walnut depth over the grain. At such an age it is a rare, deeply oaked grain, mellow, oily and fine. Each year in the warehouse softened the spirit and deepened the cask sweetness.

At 56.1%, undiluted, it is concentrated. The melanoidins of the Oloroso give fig, raisin and walnut, while the toasted oak gives vanilla, with the wood lactones lend coconut and a creme brulee note from the caramelised sugars, above the gentle grain sweetness beneath. The texture is oily and mouth coating, a hallmark of mature grain. A creamy, lingering finish rounds it off. This is a quiet farewell to a two hundred year old distillery.