Mannochmore 1977 - 22 Year Old - First Cask - Single Cask 95/23/13

Mannochmore is a quiet, but very large, Diageo distillery built in 1971 next to the Glenlossie distillery in Speyside. The vast majority of Mannochmore’s spirit goes to Diageo’s Haig blended whisky, with the only ongoing official bottling being the 12-year-old Flora and Fauna edition. Mannochmore’s house style tends towards what might be considered as a more typical Highland style: fresh, grassy, ultra-pure malt that is frequently quite austere and therefore very well-suited to long ageing. 

The best official Mannochmores are the super-austere Rare Malts 1974 edition which appeared in 1997, the same year as the equally excellent 18-year-old Manager’s Dram; and the more oak-driven 1990 vintage bottlings done for the Special Releases in 2009 and 2016. Independent Mannochmores are abundant, but most are quite young; older casks appear occasionally from the likes of Gordon & MacPhail, Cadenhead’s and the SMWS and are well worth tracking down.

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.