North of Scotland 50 Years Old 1970 (Silent Ambassador)

Distilled in 1970 and bottled at 50 years old by Silent Ambassador, this grain came in a very small release of just 24 bottles for the Belgian market. The grain comes from the silent Cambus distillery beside the Forth, where George Christie pursued a fuller style of grain whisky before closing the plant in 1980 and selling it to DCL.

Christie's wide congener cut on the patent stills built in the depth that let the spirit survive half a century in oak. Fifty years in ex-Bourbon casks places this deep in the ethereal stage, the whisky fragile and waxy, the strength reduced to near the legal minimum by decades of steady evaporation.

Bottled at 40.6%, this is grain whisky at the very limit of its life. The broken down lignin has become vanillin and a soft vanilla, the oak lactones add a coconut note, and long oxidation lays down beeswax and polished oak with a faint honeyed sweetness. The tannins are quiet, the body delicate, closing on a long and gentle finish from a distillery that no longer stands. At just twenty four bottles for the Belgian market, it is one of the scarcest 1970 releases, a fleeting glimpse of the distillery at the very end of its cask life.