Brora 1981 - 23 Year Old - First Cask - Single Cask 1556

The distillery now called Brora was known as Clynelish for most of its working life, producing a remarkable coastal Highland style lightly peated whisky with an acclaimed waxy character. Clynelish’s success led owners DCL to build a second distillery on the site in 1967, which is the Clynelish we know today. 

The original Clynelish closed briefly in 1968, but reopened the following year as Brora to make a more heavily peated malt whisky for blending purposes. Sadly the distillery was later deemed surplus to requirements and was closed in 1983. DCL’s successors Diageo announced plans to reopen Brora in 2017 and after a lengthy restoration distillation recommenced in 2021.

Any Clynelish whiskies pre-dating the 1970s are from the distillery now known as Brora, as are most if not all of the old Ainslie & Heilbron official 12-year-olds that continued into the early 1980s. The most famous modern era Brora bottlings are the 1990s Rare Malts Editions (particularly the 1972 vintages) and the Brora 30-year-olds from Diageo’s Special Releases.

The First Cask range was a prolific series of single malt whisky bottlings by the UK’s largest mail order wine company Direct Wines Ltd, owner of Laithwaite’s and The Sunday Times Wine Club. From the early 1990s until the mid-Noughties Direct Wines released dozens of outstanding single cask whiskies annually under the First Cask label, almost all of which were bottled at 46%.

These whiskies were not particularly highly sought-after on release, probably because they were only sold online through a wine club.  Back then, of course, it was not widely known that the casks had been sourced from Signatory Vintage, which would certainly have raised their profile among whisky fans. Nowadays, although still frequently excellent value at auction, the First Cask collection - which includes hundreds of long-aged whiskies from distilleries including Brora, Port Ellen, Ardbeg and Macallan - is finally getting the recognition it deserves.