Port Dundas 25 Years Old 1996 Cask #128330+128331 (Signatory Vintage)

A Port Dundas single grain, selected and bottled by Signatory Vintage, a 25 year old grain, from 1996, drawn from cask 128330+128331 and bottled at 57.3%. A small release of 500 bottles. The Glasgow grain distillery Port Dundas, founded in 1811 in the north of Glasgow, was an enormous grain distillery until silenced in 2010 as grain moved to Cameronbridge. Two fires in the early twentieth century could not halt its rise to the top.

Grain whisky like this was drawn off tall continuous column stills on wheat and malted barley, giving a soft, clean grain spirit. Matured in a refill ex-Bourbon cask, letting the clean grain character speak. Two decades and more carry the grain into a deep, rounded maturity, concentrated and waxy. The slow loss of the angel's share, one to two percent a year, has concentrated the liquid over time.

At 57.3%, undiluted, it is concentrated. The oak lends a soft vanilla, with coconut and cream from the lactones and caramelised wood sugars a toffee sweetness, over the orchard and tropical fruit of mature grain. Sweet and creamy, it coats the palate gently. The close is soft, oily and warm. This is a quiet farewell to a two hundred year old distillery.