Last year we acquired a collection of vintage malts and blends and have a series of events lined up to drink them with the club. The first of these was our Ardbeg tasting with Bry Simpson earlier this year which featured an Ardbeg 10 from the 80s.

The next vintage tasting was comprised of the many old blends we received, and there were some real hits! We kicked off with a welcome cocktail using an Irish whiskey liqueur named Mulligan, called an Irish Mule, which was a great summer refresher.

Then we started on the blends. The J&B 15 year ended up being one of the highlights of the night but we started off with it. This is discontinued, at least in North America, but I recently saw it on shelves at a MiniPreco in Portugal and was very tempted to take it home as well!

The miniatures you see in this post are from the Jim Dufton Mini Collection which we also recently acquired, and which will feature paired with similar bottlings/brands over the coming months/years. It was especially cool to compare NAS, 12yr and the 15yr bottlings all from the same era (even if some of the mini bottles had oxidized and turned a bit!)

Next up we tasted the Pinch 12yr (now known as Dimple) which also had a heavily evaporated mini to pair with it! This bottle is one of the best looking, but the juice was less favoured than the J&B.

After the Pinch we tasted an old Limited Edition Cutty Sark 12yr. the Octagonal bottle’s sides features cities that the original Cutty Sark ship would drop anchor at in its journeys! The minis were interesting and oxidized – one had a cork – but the 12 was definitely one of the better drams of the day

The last scotch blend we tasted was Grand Macnish, a bottle still available today. It was probably the weakest entry in the line-up, but there was plenty of it to go around!

Then we moved onto two blended malts. The first was the Tulach Ard, the battle cry of the Mackenzie clan meaning High Hillock. We couldn’t find much info about where the malts in it came from, but it was a tasty malt!

The final whisky of the night was Royal Culross 8yr, which as far as we could research is teaspooned Glen Scotia. It was certainly a highlight in the lineup and had some of that Campbeltown funk!

Lastly we tried the 2nd liqueur called Oran Mor. This spicy sweet dram poured a deep opaque colour, which had us wondering if it was due to improper storage/spoilage over the decades or if that was how it was intended to look! Either way, we all made it out alive and tried something that’s long gone (and likely not many out there in the wild anymore!)

A very fun event that whet members’ appetites for the vintage single malt events to come!