Dornoch Distillery Redacted (Thompson) Bros 9 Year Old "TB/BSW Final Release" Blended Scotch Whisky (700ml)

There’s simply nothing more fascinating in the whisky world than the inner workings of the big Scotch industry. From the outside, it looks like an industrial monolith of unfathomable proportions, and it’s easy to forget that the whole thing is run by people doing difficult, often dirty jobs. And people make mistakes! Sometimes someone accidentally empties a tanker of top-tier sherried single malt into a vat containing a tiny amount of young grain whisky. What can you do? In the old days, you might have ended up with a slightly better batch of Cutty Sark. Today, that malt is far too valuable to disappear into an everyday blend. Thankfully, our friends in Dornoch have excellent relationships throughout the industry and get first crack at some extraordinary parcels. Better still, they had the patience to give this one more time. While the front label says nine years, we understand that 99.999% of the contents is sherry-matured single malt from one of Scotland’s most prestigious distilleries, now aged 15 years. Incredible for $65. This is the final batch of this particular parcel, so we’ll have to wait for someone else to make a very expensive mistake before anything like it comes around again. Shall we? The color is a vibrant burnished gold (1.1). The nose is pure oloroso: roasted nuts, oxidative depth, leather, stone fruit compote, marmalade, roasted arabica, and the wonderfully evocative scent of an old dunnage warehouse. The palate opens sweetly with dense stone fruit, mostly apricot, before an oily mid-palate delivers old-school sherry rancio. It’s less sugary and less dominated by red fruit than many modern sherry bombs, but it sacrifices nothing in character. To my palate, these flavors are closer to great old sherry itself than the overtly wine-driven profiles we encounter so often today. This is one of the best Scotch whisky deals we’ve ever offered, a truly special bottle whose quality is immediately apparent, even without knowing the improbable story behind it.