Miltonduff 2007-2018 - 11 Year Old - Coopers Choice - Single Cask 9733

Miltonduff distillery is a large, quiet Speyside workhorse, spending its days providing spirit for Ballantine’s blended whisky, with which it has been associated since 1936 when Ballantine’s owner Hiram Walker bought the distillery. Miltonduff and Ballantine’s became part of Pernod Ricard’s portfolio when former owner Allied Domecq was gobbled up by Pernod in 2005. In 2022 a major expansion plan was announced for Miltonduff that will take the distillery’s capacity to almost 16m litres per year.

In 1964, during the Hiram Walker days, Miltonduff was fitted with a pair of Lomond stills, on which the experimental Mosstowie single malt was produced until 1981. Independent bottlings of Mosstowie can still be found at auction, with excellent examples by Signatory and Sestante. Official bottlings of Miltonduff are rare, but there have been some great casks over the years from the likes of Gordon & MacPhail, Duncan Taylor, the SMWS and the Italian bottlers Sestante, Samaroli and Moon Import.

Cooper’s Choice is a long-running range of independently-bottled single malt whiskies from The Vintage Malt Whisky Company. Vintage Malt was set up in 1992 by Brian Crook, a former director at Morrison Bowmore, and the first Cooper’s Choice bottlings were introduced the following year, bottled at 43% initially with the first cask strength releases appearing in 1994. 

Early Cooper’s Choice bottlings of note included 1970s vintage casks from Ardbeg, Port Ellen and Scapa, and a large number of top class drams appeared under the label throughout the 1990s and 2000s. Cooper's Choice’s standard bottling strength was increased to 46% around 2012 but many releases are at cask strength. Alongside Cooper’s Choice, Vintage Malts also have their own proprietary Islay whisky brands including Finlaggan, The Ileach and Islay Storm.