Glen Mhor 33 Years Old 1975 Cask #4035 (Duncan Taylor)

The Huntly bottler Duncan Taylor bottled this Glen Mhor, a 33 year old, distilled in 1975, from cask 4035, bottled at 40.2%, one of 250 bottles. Glen Mhor ran on Loch Ness water in Inverness for over ninety years before closing in 1983. It installed Saladin box maltings in 1954, malting its own barley on site.

Distilled slow in the Inverness stillhouse, the worm tubs lending weight, for a fruity, oily spirit with real body. First fill bourbon gave a fuller vanilla and a touch of coconut. Ethereal and fragile, decades draw the oily malt to a waxy, honeyed delicacy of sotolon, dried fruit and old oak. Years in oak round the spirit, the orchard fruit deepening to dried fruit and beeswax. Vanillin and oak lactones from the wood lend vanilla and coconut over the fruit. Active wood frames the fruit without smothering the full, oily spirit. The writer Neil Gunn, an Inverness exciseman, famously praised Glen Mhor above all. With Glen Mhor gone, every bottle draws on a finite, dwindling stock.

At 40.2%, undiluted, it is deep and waxy. A rich, oily fruitiness, with a soft vanilla from the oak. A baked apple and an oily weight lift it. A long, full finish ends on orchard fruit and beeswax. This is a rare Highland single malt from a demolished distillery.