Dalmore 1990 - 19 Year Old - First Cask - Single Cask 9416

One of the Highland’s most famous and prestigious distilleries, Dalmore has for many decades been associated with Master Blender Richard Paterson, one of the whisky industry’s biggest personalities. The distillery has been part of blending giant Whyte & Mackay since 1960 and somehow flourished during that company’s turbulent decades of ownership change and management failure preceding the takeover by Filipino owners Emperador Inc. in 2014.

Dalmore has long been associated with sherried whisky, and the distillery’s spirit is capable of extended ageing, giving Paterson almost unrivalled long-aged stocks to work with. Consequently, Dalmore has consistently pushed the envelope for luxury single malt whiskies, bottling a 50-year-old single malt whisky in the 1970s and the famous Dalmore 64-year-old Trinitas, the first £100k whisky, in 2010 - both of which included small amounts of whisky distilled in the 19th century.

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.