Tormore 12 Year Old - 2000s

Completed in 1959, Tormore was the first new distillery built in Scotland in the 20th century. Tormore's distillery buildings are endearingly incongruous neoclassical agglomerations of granite and glass with verdigris copper rooftops and a musical clock, in front of which some modest topiary and an almost apologetic water feature face directly onto the A95 a stone’s throw from Cragganmore. 

Tormore is one of the quietest distilleries in Speyside in terms of bottlings, with former owners Pernod Ricard reserving the vast majority of its output for their Chivas Brothers subsidiary’s portfolio of blended whiskies. Official bottlings of Tormore are scarce but in the last few years a string of strikingly good long-aged casks of late 1980s and early 1990s vintage Tormore have appeared from indie bottlers.

In June 2022 it was announced that Pernod Ricard had sold Tormore to Elixir Distillers, from whom they had bought The Whisky Exchange the previous November.

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.