Mosstowie 1975-2007 - 32 Year Old - Duncan Taylor - Rare Auld - Single Cask 5810

Mosstowie was not a distillery - the name was given to a particular style of experimental whisky made at Miltonduff, a workhorse distillery for the Ballantine’s blended whisky brand. Miltonduff was fitted in 1964 with a pair of Lomond stills - curious hybrids consisting of a normal pot still base with a neck containing rectifying plates like a column still, designed to enable a distiller to increase reflux and produce different styles of spirit.

Mosstowie was made at Miltonduff until 1981, when the Lomond stills were replaced with traditional pot stills. The vast majority of Mosstowie’s whisky was used for blending, but there have been some very successful independent bottlings over the years. Most of the best Mosstowies are from Signatory Vintage, although other notable bottlings have appeared from the SMWS, Gordon & MacPhail, La Maison du Whisky and the Italian bottler Sestante.

Duncan Taylor was founded in 1938, originally as a cask broker. The Glasgow-based company was acquired in the 1960s by the American blender and entrepreneur Abe Rosenberg, who amassed a large stock of maturing casks. Following Rosenberg’s death in 1994 the Duncan Taylor business lay dormant until the early 2000s, when the trustees offered some casks to businessmen Euan Shand and Alan Gordon. 

Shand and Gordon were so impressed with Duncan Taylor’s stock that they bought the company in 2002 and began bottling some of Rosenberg’s best casks. A string of extraordinary bottlings of Longmorn, Macallan, Bowmore and Springbank were released under the now defunct Peerless range and today Duncan Taylor, with Shand in full control since 2006, is established as one of Scotland’s most interesting independent bottlers.