Mannochmore 1992-2010 - 19 Year Old - The Whisky Castle - Single Cask 440

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.

An institution in the Highland village of Tomintoul, where it was founded in 1904, The Whisky Castle is a family-run independent retailer and whisky bottler with a long but infrequent history of releasing some exceptional single malt whiskies.

The Whisky Castle began bottling their own-label single malts and blended whiskies in the early 1990s, and their Castle Collection range has included excellent drams from distilleries including Lochside, Ben Nevis, Caol Ila, Glenallachie, Bowmore and Springbank. The Whisky Castle’s releases are bottled without colouring or chill filtration and recent bottlings have been at either 46% or cask strength.