Auchroisk 15 Years Old 2007 Cask #DL 15889 (Old Particular)

Bottled by Douglas Laing in 2022 as a 15 year old single cask in the Old Particular range, drawn from cask DL 15889 of 2007 vintage Auchroisk with 208 bottles distributed to the German market at high cask strength of 60.6%. Old Particular is Douglas Laing's flagship single cask programme, presenting natural strength releases at non chill filtered, natural colour presentation.

Distilled in 2007 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.

Fifteen 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 60.6% across fifteen years indicates a tight cask with minimal evaporative loss, and continued ester transformation layers concentrated fruit over the spirit's signature light, ester forward profile.