Auchroisk 23 Years Old 1993 Cask #8641 (A.D. Rattray)

Bottled by A.D. Rattray in 2016 as a 23 year old single cask release, drawn from cask 8641 of 1993 vintage Auchroisk with 282 bottles distributed to the German market at natural strength of 49.1%. A.D. Rattray is a family run Scottish independent bottler founded in 1868 by Andrew Dewar Rattray, now run by the Morrison family with focus on single cask releases at natural strength.

Distilled in 1993 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.

Twenty three years in temperate Speyside warehousing drove patient 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. Settling at 49.1% reflects steady evaporative loss across the long maturation, with tertiary stage ester transformation layering polished fruit over the spirit's signature light, ester forward profile.