Mannochmore 2008-2021 - 12 Year Old - North Star Spirits - Cask Series 014 - Single Cask

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.

North Star Spirits is an independent whisky bottling company founded in Glasgow in 2016 by AD Rattray alumnus Iain Croucher. North Star quickly established itself as one of the most popular of the recent wave of Scottish independent whisky bottlers thanks to a prolific series of top class whiskies released in eye-catching packaging at sensible prices. North Star Spirits was named Independent Bottler of the Year at the Scottish Whisky Awards in 2020 and 2021.

Besides their excellent single cask and small batch single malt releases, which are bottled without colouring or chill filtration and are usually at cask strength, North Star have also released several outstanding blended malt and blended Scotch whiskies alongside occasional bottlings of rum, gin, bourbon and Pedro Ximenez fortified wine.