North British 2007-2017 - Wemyss Malts - Single Cask

North British is a Lowland grain whisky distillery owned jointly by Diageo and Edrington and has a production capacity of around 70 million litres of alcohol per annum. The distillery was founded on the outskirts of Edinburgh in 1855 by blenders William Sanderson, James Crabbie and Andrew Usher with the goal of easing their reliance on the grain whisky cartel Distillers Company Limited.

North British remained independent for over a century before being taken over in 1993 by Edrington Group and, ironically, International Distillers and Vintners - the descendant of North British’s original rival Distillers Company Limited. Today North British also makes Smirnoff vodka, while the distillery’s easy-drinking single grain whisky has recently become widely available from independent whisky bottlers including Signatory, Douglas Laing and Hunter Laing.

William Wemyss founded Wemyss Malts in 2005 after a period working in the wine industry. The company bottles a range of single cask and small batch malt whiskies at 46% or cask strength, and are most famous for their range of blended malts including The Hive, Spice King and Peat Chimney. 

The vast majority of Wemyss products are strongly flavour-themed and, similar to the Scotch Malt Whisky Society, the company’s single cask malts are given playful flavour-based names. Wemyss have bottled some outstanding single cask single malts this century, including remarkable casks from Springbank, Caol Ila, Bowmore and Bunnahabhain. The Wemyss company became distillers in their own right in 2014 when they took over and completed the Kingsbarns distillery project.