Ben Nevis 1997-2023 - 26 Year Old - Claxtons - Warehouse No.1 - Single Cask C23081

Founded in 1825 by ‘Long John’ MacDonald, Ben Nevis is one of the classic Highland distilleries. Ben Nevis was purchased in the 1940s by Joseph Hobbs, who fitted a Coffey still enabling the distillery to produce both malt and grain whisky. A mothballed Ben Nevis was sold in 1981 to Long John Distillers (Whitbread), who refurbished the distillery and restarted production before selling up in 1989 to the Japanese firm Nikka, under whose stewardship the distillery has thrived.

For much of its early life Ben Nevis supplied the famous Dew of Ben Nevis blended whisky and single malt official bottlings were sporadic. That all changed after 1989, when Nikka bottled a 63-year-old Ben Nevis 1926 and embarked on an impressive run of vintage single casks and small batches alongside a core range 10-year-old. The early Nikka bottlings of 1960s & ‘70s vintages are particularly highly sought after. Independent Ben Nevis is abundant.

Claxton’s is a family-owned independent bottler of single malt whisky based in Yorkshire but with a bonded warehouse and bottling facility in Dumfries in the Scottish Lowlands. The company began bottling single cask whiskies in 2015 and have become prolific in recent years, with over 400 releases under their belt by mid 2024, the most famous of which is probably the outstanding 22-year-old Springbank 1996 released in 2018.

Claxton’s Warehouse No.1 and Warehouse No.8 whiskies are single cask releases and are bottled at cask strength, with the Warehouse No.8 releases usually from Octaves or other small casks. The company introduced their Claxton’s Explorations series in 2020, a range of youngish whiskies bottled at 50%.