Bladnoch 30 Year Old 1990 SMWS Single Ex Bourbon Cask 50.113 Tropical Goodies in a Stately Home Lowland Single Malt Scotch Whisky (2020) 70cl

1 of 74 bottles produced

The Scotch Malt Whisky Society was founded in Edinburgh in 1983 by Phillip 'Pip' Hills who, while travelling around Scotland in the 1970s, fell in love with whiskies drawn straight from the cask. After he expanded his syndicate the Society was purchased by Glenmorangie PLC in 2004. In 2015, the Society was sold back to private investors. In June 2021, the private owners floated the holding company The Artisanal Spirits Company plc on the Alternative Investment Market of the London Stock Exchange.

It has a unique code system where the first number refers to the distillery and the second refers to the cask from which the bottle comes. SMWS also offers the largest range of distilleries of any independent bottler. These curiously named drams really do have something for every whisky lover!

The SMWS are one of the Britain's most revered independent bottlers with a worldwide network of partner bars with one mission of getting as much whisky at natural cask strength without water to different nations including USA, Canada, Switzerland, UK, Austria, Germany and many others.

These older labels from the first runs are mostly with distillation methods that include direct heat which was replaced with steam for many distilleries for environmental reasons changing the taste of whisky forever. It'll get real interesting when nuclear fusion is used to distil whisky. We might glow green for a few weeks after we drink the stuff. Who knows.... but all we know is that the old stuff has a musky taste that is VERY welcomed by people nowadays trying to time travel through whisky's past.

Mothballed in 2009, Bladnoch distillery got a stay of execution when it was purchased by Australian yoghurt tycoon David Prior. The distillery (near Wigtown in Dumfries and Galloway) was what you would call “a bit of a fixer upper”; but after extensive renovations, production finally resumed in summer 2017, and three stylishly rebranded expressions were bottled from existing stock.

As well as holding the title for most southerly Scottish distillery, Bladnoch is also one of the oldest, and it seems rather poetic that its phoenix-like resurrection takes place during its bicentennial year.

TASTING NOTES

50.4% ABV

70cl