Source: Photo by Derek Blair/AFP
A Scottish whisky firm has unveiled bottles of what it claims is the oldest single malt whisky in the world, having spent the best part of a century inside an oak barrel.
Gordon and MacPhail’s Mortlach 70-Year-Old Speyside was sampled at a launch party in Edinburgh Castle, where it was escorted through the doors by pipers and a military escort.
The whisky was filled into its sherry hogshead cask made from Spanish oak on October 15, 1938 by the grandfather of the company’s managing directors David and Michael Urquhar. The limited edition malt whisly whisky has been bottled in a "tear shaped, hand-blown" crystal decanter with a silver stopper with just 54full-sized bottles priced at 10,000 pounds (~$15,400 Cdn) each, with another 162 smaller bottles on sale for 2,000 pounds (~$3,085 Cdn).
Whisky taster Charles MacLean describes the single malt as "a delicate, fresh, vital, fruity whisky, with unusual attributes of waxiness and smokiness.
"It’s the oldest cask of whisky that, in my knowledge, has ever been bottled," he says. "The spirit and the wood have inter-reacted beautifully over this long period of time.
Advertisement
