Dalmore 12 Year Old - Early 2000s

One of the Highland’s most famous and prestigious distilleries, Dalmore has for many decades been associated with Master Blender Richard Paterson, one of the whisky industry’s biggest personalities. The distillery has been part of blending giant Whyte & Mackay since 1960 and somehow flourished during that company’s turbulent decades of ownership change and management failure preceding the takeover by Filipino owners Emperador Inc. in 2014.

Dalmore has long been associated with sherried whisky, and the distillery’s spirit is capable of extended ageing, giving Paterson almost unrivalled long-aged stocks to work with. Consequently, Dalmore has consistently pushed the envelope for luxury single malt whiskies, bottling a 50-year-old single malt whisky in the 1970s and the famous Dalmore 64-year-old Trinitas, the first £100k whisky, in 2010 - both of which included small amounts of whisky distilled in the 19th century.

Distillery bottlings are, as the name suggests, bottled by or for the distillery from which the whisky has originated and are thus often referred to as Official Bottlings or OBs. Distillery bottlings are generally more desirable for collectors and usually fetch higher prices at auction than independent bottlings. They are officially-endorsed versions of the whisky from a particular distillery and are therefore considered the truest expression of the distillery’s character.

This ideal of the distillery character is regarded so seriously by the distilleries and brand owners that casks of whisky that are considered to vary too far from the archetype are frequently sold on to whisky brokers and independent bottlers. When this happens, it is often with the proviso that the distillery’s name is not allowed to be used when the cask is bottled for fear of diminishing or damaging the distillery’s character and status.