Please appreciate our late April snow.

North British is a grain distillery. There is nothing very remarkable about it (if you would like to feel a little frisson take a look at the image on the top of this page on their site) except that casks of very old whisky distilled at North British in the 1960s have emerged recently, and some of them have been quite competitively priced (compared to very old malt whiskies).

Of all of those, the one I am tasting tonight was perhaps the most remarkable deal. Archives is the name of the label operated by the excellent Whiskybase store in the Netherlands. Menno and CJ, the lads behind Whiskybase (which has been around for a while as the most comprehensive crowd-sourced database of reviews and ratings online; the store opened much later), are whisky drinkers first and foremost, and their bottlings tend to be no-nonsense and exceptional values. In keeping with that let’s keep the preamble short and get right to the notes. Continue reading →