Longmorn 15 Year Old - Circa 1990

One of the greatest Speyside distilleries, Longmorn was founded in 1894 and today is one of the shiniest stars in owner Pernod Ricard’s Chivas Brothers portfolio of whisky distilleries. Although official bottlings are thin on the ground, Longmorn’s whisky was for many years bottled under license by Gordon & MacPhail, who have released a high proportion of the all-time classic Longmorns and still put out outstanding long-aged Longmorn today.

Longmorn’s whisky sparkles in both sherry and bourbon casks and is capable of withstanding extremely long maturation periods while still retaining (particularly in the older vintages) a superb old-school waxiness and the distillery’s trademark grapefruit and exotic fruit flavours, with the fruitiest examples coming from the mid-1970s and earlier. Older vintages also generally have more prominent threads of smoke and mineral notes among the honeyed fruit and chocolate biscuit flavours.

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.