Deanston 8 Year Old Bottled 1980s

Deanston 18 Year Old Batch 1

Deanston used to be a cotton factory until 1966. Until 1971 they put Old Bannockburn on their label. Only after the distillery was taken over by Invergordon, in 1972, did they change it to Deanston. In 1982 it was closed, but in 1990 Burn Stewart Distillers Ltd gave it a second lease on life. Only 15% of the production is meant for single malt,...

Score 83/100

Deanston 9 Year Old 2008 Bordeaux Red Wine Cask

You see them more often nowadays: whisky’s finished or matured on red wine casks from France. This Deanston from 2008 spent the whole 9 years on such a cask from Bordeaux and was bottled at cask strength in 2017. The nose bursts with red fruit, caramel, sniffing tobacco and red candy. Some furniture polish and blood oranges, but cherries quickly...

Score 86/100

Deanston 12 Year Old

Since 2009, Deanston is no longer chill filtered and bottled at a strength of 46,3% ABV. This was not always the case. Today, I will be trying two older versions of the Deanston 12 Year Old. One from 1990, the other from 2007, both bottled at 40% ABV. To allow easy reading, I will refer to them as D1 (the ‘old’ bottle) and D2 (the 2007 version)....

Score 76/100

Deanston 22 Year Old 1996 The Golden Cask Reserve

A few years ago House of Macduff, Scottish indie, bottled this 22 years old Deanston in their well-known series The Gold Cask, which is reserved for single cask releases at cask strength. Well, that nose is something else. Not very fruity – and the fruit that I do get has started to rot, which is not an off-note – but mostly notes of pastry and...

Score 88/100