Here is an indie release from the Diageo distillery, Mortlach. Unlike Linkwood, Mortlach was promoted from obscurity to the frontline a few years ago when Diageo decided to put out a number of overpriced releases. (This was also the occasion for my whiffing badly in public as I’d anticipated that those releases would be priced very differently.) I’m not sure how those releases have worked out for Diageo. Whisky geeks have not been overly enthused about them but they may well be selling well to regular punters—if you have good information on this please chime in below. I’m also not sure how much Mortlach has been available since then to the independents; before then, of course, Mortlach was available almost entirely from the independents—the Flora & Fauna 16 yo being the only regular official release. Anyway, this was released last year by Malts of Scotland and looks to be very richly sherried. Continue reading
Category Archives: Mortlach
Mortlach 19, 1991 (Signatory)
Now that my number of open bottles is down below 40 I’ve begun to finally open a bunch of not particularly exciting bottles that I purchased some years ago in my great hoarding period and put away for no good reason. This Mortlach from Signatory’s UCF line was one of those. I opened it a few months ago for one of my local group’s tastings and while it did not set anyone’s hair on fire, almost everyone liked it. I’ve been drinking it regularly since then and here now are some formal notes.
Mortlach 19, 1991 (46%; Signatory Unchilfiltered Collection; sherry butt 7710; from my own bottle)
Nose: A little metallic; raisins, a bit of orange peel and a bit of dusty wood. Not a whole lot of interest. A little more expressive with a few drops of water but still not particularly interesting.
Mortlach 21 (Gordon & MacPhail)
Gordon & MacPhail have a Mortlach 15 and a Mortlach 21 in fairly regular release and I’ve always been very curious about both. I’ve never pulled the trigger on a purchase both because I’ve heard inconsistent things about both bottlings (and there’s no year of release or batch number clearly marked) and because the prices I’ve seen have always seemed a little high for non-cask strength indie releases. Accordingly, when this 21 yo went on sale in Minneapolis last year I finally went for it. I opened it as the lead whisky in a tasting of older malts with my local group late last year and while it was no one’s favourite it put on a decent show in the company of some higher powered malts (including this Archives Bunnahabhain and this Scott’s Selection Glen Grant).
I sat down with it later for a formal review. Herewith, my findings (these notes were taken more than a month ago—the bottle itself is long gone). Continue reading
Mortlach 15, 1995 (Chieftain’s)
Mortlach has been in the news a lot this year with the launch of their hyper-expensive new line. Prices of indie casks from the distillery seem to also have gone up a little as a result. It will be interesting to see if things remain that way in the long run. Diageo may want to protect the new profile of their brand by making fewer casks available to the indies but if production is also going up (a big if) then more casks will become available anyway.
At any rate, this is not a recent release. It was released in 2011 by Ian Macleod’s Chieftain’s Choice label. This label used to be quite ubiquitous in the United States once upon a time, but I haven’t noticed too many new releases—not that that means very much given my general level of obliviousness and my disinterest in reading press releases and marketing materials. This was a bottle I thought hard about when it was first released but after tasting it at a Minneapolis store decided against it. I did love an older Mortlach bottled by Chieftain’s for K&L and so always wondered if I’d given unfair short shrift to this one. And so I’m very glad to be able to review it again from a large’ish sample.
Mortlach 18, 1991 (Signatory)
Months go by without a single Mortlach review and then three come at once. I mentioned this Signatory bottling in my post/comments on the Chieftain’s K&L exclusive Mortlach and then remembered that I had saved a 6 oz reference sample. The bottle it was taken from was opened almost three years ago, but the sample was from early in the life of the bottle and today was the first time I poured from it. This was a Binny’s exclusive some years ago.
Binny’s also put out annual exclusive releases; usually from Signatory and Gordon & Macphail, and usually with a lot less fanfare than K&L–though to be fair, Binny’s are far more established and perhaps don’t need to make as much noise. Still, whatever the reason, I can’t say I don’t appreciate their more laid back manner. I will say though that of late K&L’s selections are far more interesting than Binny’s.
Mortlach 22, 1990 (Chieftain’s)
This Mortlach is a K&L exclusive selection via Chieftain’s. With characteristic understatement they inform that this is the best Mortlach they’ve ever found or ever will find again (every exclusive sold at K&L seems to be in that range); alas, with similarly characteristic lack of attention to detail they also say that the majority of Mortlach sold in the US by independent bottlers is from bourbon casks. Well, while there do seem to be a few recent releases from bourbon hogsheads and barrels of late, I can think of three sherried selections from Signatory and G&M for Binny’s alone in the last few years, and the somewhat dangerous 15 yo from G&M that’s the most ubiquitous Mortlach in the US is also sherried. In other words, sherried Mortlachs are not such unknowns in the US. Once again, accuracy loses to enthusiasm in K&L’s marketing.
But is this Mortlach better than all of those? Let’s see. Continue reading
Mortlach 16, “Flora & Fauna”
I am looking forward to reviewing a K&L exclusive 22 yo Mortlach from Chieftain’s tomorrow (well, later tonight, but it will be posted tomorrow) and thought that to calibrate I’d pour myself some of the only other Mortlach I have open, the beloved 16 yo from the “Flora & Fauna” series.
Mortlach, a Speyside distillery, produces a lot of malt for Diageo’s blends. This is the only official bottling available regularly as a single malt. Their spirit is partially triple-distilled (as at Springbank, though Mortlach apparently has a particularly odd configuration of stills) and they are also one of not very many distilleries left in Scotland that uses wooden worm tubs to condense the distilled spirit. The reduced copper contact results in less removal of sulphur compounds than at most distilleries and this in turn results in a meatier, more savoury spirit. I’ve had a number of intense single cask releases of Mortlach from the independents but there’s something about this gentler, simpler 16 yo that I really like.
Continue reading
