Tomatin Decades - 2011 Release

Tomatin’s splendid Highland single malt whisky has long been an unsung hero, despite being at one point the largest distillery in Scotland, with a 1974 expansion taking the total number of stills to 23 before financial liquidation in the 1980s ushered in a long, stable era of Japanese ownership. Nowadays, Tomatin has cut back to 12 stills and has a capacity of around 5m litres per annum, although actual production is only around 2m litres. 

Tomatin has increased its profile recently, reaping the benefits of a strong wood policy, and awareness of the distillery’s quality is higher than ever thanks to some spectacular official and independent bottlings of 1970s vintages, the best of which show beautiful tropical fruit notes. The standard range is full of reliably high quality drams that punch above their price, and older bottlings of Tomatin are still very good value at auction.

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.