Inverleven 12 Years Old 1984 Licensed Bottling (G&M)

Gordon & MacPhail, the Elgin house whose warehouse holdings make it the great keeper of closed-distillery whisky, bottled this 1984 Inverleven as a Licensed Bottling. Released for Germany at 12 years old, it sits at the more approachable end of the range, a Lowland malt at standard strength.

Inverleven was built in 1938 inside the Dumbarton grain complex to supply Ballantine's, its spirit light and grassy. Younger than most of the surviving stock, this captures the malt closer to how it was when the distillery still ran. Matured in ex-Bourbon oak, the cask gives gentle structure to a young Lowland spirit.

Bottled at 40%. The ex-Bourbon wood gives vanilla and coconut from vanillin and oak lactones. The recorded notes run to cocoa, dried fruit and a cooked, earthy depth alongside a coal-gas edge, a savoury and characterful young Inverleven. Honest and increasingly hard to find.