Category Archives: Longmorn

Longmorn 41, 1969 (Gordon & Macphail)

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Longmorn 41, 1969

This is the the oldest Longmorn I’ve yet tasted. I referred to it in my review of the 1968-2004 from Scott’s Selection as probably the last Longmorn of this age and era that I will get to taste. This one is from Gordon & Macphail and was bottled for van Wees in the Netherlands. I couldn’t spring for a full bottle but also couldn’t resist paying for two 20 ml samples when the good people of Whiskybase made them available. As the samples were not themselves cheap I hope this one will live up to the standards of the other ancient Longmorns I’ve had.

I think this one might be different though from the others of its age/era that I’ve tasted in that it’s from a first fill sherry butt. I don’t believe the G&M 40, 1971 (the previous oldest Longmorn I’ve had) was from first fill sherry, and I don’t believe any of the Scott’s bottles are either (Scott’s Selection, of course, very rarely specified the type of cask their releases were from). Continue reading →

Longmorn-Glenlivet 1968-2004 (Scott’s Selection)

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Longmorn 1968-2004

At the risk of being accused of lapsing into decadence, here is another ancient Longmorn from Scott’s Selection. This one is the 1968-2004 release which, like the 1968-2003, is at a very high abv compared to the two 1967’s released around the same time (both of those were in the low 50%s; see here for the 1967-2004). This is the only one I have not previously tried of the five Scott’s Longmorn-Glenlivet bottlings released in the mid-2000s and so I am really looking forward to it. It’s also the only one I never actually saw in the wild myself so I can’t kick myself for not picking up a bottle.

I have another sample of a different ancient Longmorn from this period on my shelf (that one’s from Gordon & Macphail) and once I’m done with that one I’m probably done with getting to taste ancient Longmorns. Prices are now through the roof. An end of an era? Hopefully, Longmorns from later decades will be as good with as long aging but they will not, I am pretty sure, be as (relatively) affordable as these whiskies once were. Oh well.

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Longmorn-Glenlivet 1967-2004 (Scott’s Selection)

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Longmorn 1967-2004

Here is another of the excellent old Longmorns released by Scott’s Selection in the early-mid 2000s. I’ve previously reviewed the great 1968-2003 and now here is one distilled a year earlier and bottled a year later. Until a couple of years ago these bottles could be found relatively easily at reasonable prices, but now they seem to be mostly gone, and what’s left seems to have largely had its price hiked. So it goes.

I opened this bottle for the gathering for my friend Rich’s birthday in September, the one that yielded the samples of the Clynelish Manager’s Dram and the Talisker 30s (plus some others yet to be reviewed). And it was as good as I remember it being from the one previous occasion that I’d got to taste it.

But enough futile talk: I’d like to taste it again. Continue reading →

Longmorn 11,1999 (Alambic Classique)

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Longmorn 11, 1999, Alambic ClassiqueOld Longmorn (especially from the late 1960s and early 1970s) is usually utterly brilliant stuff—see here and here, for example—but I’ve not had quite as much luck with more recent/younger Longmorn, whether official or independent—see here and here (and here for an exception). As to whether this is just the luck of the draw or whether Longmorn’s spirit reaches its peak at a much later age, or if there was something crucially different about that earlier period, I don’t know. I do know that this 11 yo from the German bottler Alambic Classique does not lift the average of recent/young Longmorns.

I bought it a while ago and opened it a couple of months ago for one of our local group’s tastings—and while no one hated it, it didn’t really ring anyone’s bells either. For that reason, mostly, I’ve been putting off returning to review it despite having listed it in my “Coming Soon…” forecasts for quite some time now. But here I am now. Continue reading →

Longmorn 15, 1992 (James Macarthur)

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jmac-longmornHere is a Longmorn bottled a while ago by James MacArthur, an established indie. I’m not sure if their availability in the US has been uninterrupted. This bottle is from 2007, as are two more bought at the same time, but I don’t recall any since prior to the big splash they made a year or two ago. If you know if they’ve been here but quiet the whole time or if like Cadenhead’s they exited and then re-entered, please write in below.

This bottle (and a Bowmore and a Caol Ila) were split three ways with Michael Kravitz of Diving For Pearls and Florin, who fights crime up and down the Pacific Coast by night, all the while keeping up appearances as a rodeo clown in the greater Barstow area. This review is being posted simultaneously with Michael’s (link forthcoming as soon as I have woken up and found it: and here it is). This is, in fact, the first of five simultaneous reviews, all to be posted on Friday mornings. As usual we have not discussed the whisky or our notes ahead of time. Let’s see what we both think.

This cask seems to have been split with half being bottled for the US market and half for a whisky festival in Italy (both by James MacArthur). Continue reading →

Longmorn 40, 1971 (G&M)

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Longmorn 40, 1971Old Longmorn can be a very wonderful thing, as a number of more experienced drinkers than me attest. I’ve not had very many (and have only reviewed one) but each one that I’ve had has been excellent. This one is no different. I’ve tried it on two previous occasions. First at a small potluck gathering earlier this year that featured sherry matured whiskies (I contributed this single oloroso cask Glendronach) and then again at the recent birthday/wedding whisky blowout where it was one of the whiskies outside the main flight available for guests to sample as substitutes (I drank it in place of the Glen Ord 30 which I know very well). On both occasions it held its own (and then some) against some very high-powered whiskies, despite being bottled at only 43%. I am very glad to have the opportunity to taste it again in a setting where I can record detailed notes. Continue reading →

Messing with Texas: Blending Brimstone, Pt. 2

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Brimstone Blend 2

Half of this was saved for later.

So, my first blending experiment with the Balcones Brimstone that I despise (Batch BRM 11-10) worked out really well. Mixing half an ounce of the Brimstone with one ounce of the Longmorn 16 took out the most offensive raw wood notes of the Brimstone and mellowed it out nicely. Of course, I’m not stopping there (and not just because my Longmorn 16 is much closer to the end than my Brimstone). The goal tonight is to add more citrus/acid fruit to the blend and also some phenols.

Tonight’s recipe:

.5 ounce Brimstone
.5 ounce Longmorn 16
.5 ounce Glen Moray 12
1 ounce Caol Ila 10 (Signatory UCF)

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Messing with Texas: Blending Brimstone, Pt. 1

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Brimstone Blend 1As I type this I have a large’ish stack of papers to grade in less than 48 hours and a review to complete that was originally due to a journal seven months ago. Therefore, I am naturally engaged instead in messing around with the nastiest whisky I’ve had in recent memory: the Balcones Brimstone. Tonight I blend it with an inoffensive and very different whisky: the Longmorn 16, a gentle Speysider from Scotland. Let’s see if anything good comes of it, and if a terrible whisky and a middling whisky can add up to a more palatable whole than the sum of their parts..

(If you don’t home-blend/vat, by the way, you absolutely should. It’s both a way of potentially rescuing bad or dull malts, and a way of making interesting whiskies out of malts you already love. My friends, who are generally averse to saying anything nice about me, will tell you that some of my Frankenmalt experiments have been very good.)
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Longmorn 16

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Longmorn 16
This is the only official Longmorn available in the US, and may well be the only official Longmorn widely available anywhere (I guess I could look it up). The packaging of this somewhat overpriced expression (close to $100 in most US markets) has a couple of odd features: some sort of faux canvas cushion on the bottom of the bottle (which is actually not a bad idea, as I am surely not alone in accidentally thumping the occasional bottle down on a shelf or countertop, but in practice it looks cheesy); and a box with an odd “gull wing” opening which has caused many people heart attacks in stores as it swivels opens unexpectedly when you hold the box as you normally would. This kind of thing is what the brain-trust at Chivas Bros. seems to be spending its time on instead of giving us more expressions of one of the most elegant yet most unsung malts in all of Scotland. Still, we must give them credit for bottling it at 48%.
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Longmorn-Glenlivet 1968-2003 (Scott’s Selection)

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Even though it says Longmorn-Glenlivet on the label, this is just a Longmorn. The name harkens back to a time when lots of distilleries in the Speyside would glom on to the Glenlivet distillery’s reputation and append its name to their bottles. The practice is no longer allowed, so you might think of this as a throwback label. Scott’s Selection is an independent bottler that used to be more ubiquitous in the US a decade or so ago–I’ve not seen very many recent bottlings from them in American stores. Their reputation is up and down, but the five Longmorn-Glenlivets they released in the US in the early-mid 2000s are all excellent–at least the four I have sampled are, and the odds are on the side of the fifth. Much like old Caperdonichs from this general era, these old Longmorns can be intensely fruity, in particular, intensely tropically fruity and the one I am trying tonight is no exception.
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Longmorn 16, 1987 (Whisky Galore)

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wglongmornLongmorn is a Speyside distillery most of whose output goes into Pernod Ricard’s blends. At least I assume it does as so litle is released as single malts by the distillery: there is an official 16 year old bottling (which replaced an earlier 15 yo) but that’s pretty much it. Most whisky geeks are puzzled by the owners’ seeming lack of interest in Longmorn as a single malt producer as its whisky–widely available as single malts from independent bottlers–is of uniformly high quality. Its principal quality is its soft mellow mouthfeel and a wonderful fruitiness, which manifests itself as bright summery fruit when young (especially when coming out of bourbon casks) and can exhibit wonderful and deep tropical and fermented notes once it gets to the 30 yo mark (and comes out of refill sherry casks).

The Longmorn I am tasting tonight was released by Duncan Taylor in 2003 as part of their now-defunct Whisky Galore line. Whisky Galore bottlings were generally affordable, and the few I have tried have all been quite good. This line has since been replaced by the NC2 line. The label does not specify but this is quite clearly from a bourbon cask, and given the lack of pronounced vanilla notes probably a refill cask.

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