North British 1962 50 Year Old Cask #8228 Douglas Laing Directors

North British G1.8 - A bag of assorted boiled sweets

Here's a Sunday treat, and a lucky one at that - three grain whiskies from the Scotch Malt Whisky Society! I rarely get to taste SMWS bottles, let alone grain whiskies at all. So tonight, let's do all three! For those who are new to this style of whisky, grain whiskies are distilled from a mixture of malted barley and other unmalted cereals such...

Score 82/100

North British 15 Year Old 2000 Malts of Scotland

Grain whisky in a sherry cask… it does not happen often. But if it works – as it does in this bottling – it can give you a fantastic whisky. The German Malts of Scotland released this North British 2000 at the end of 2015. Judging by the color, it slept on a fairly active cask. It should not come as a surprise that the first whiff is rife with...

Score 87/100

SMWS G1.7 - Flamed Christmas Pudding

"A grain whisky?", I hear you cry. "I thought this was a malt society?" Hang on though. This is no normal grain whisky. Some time back around the birth of the interwebs (Christmas 1990), the spirit for this bottle went into an old sherry cask. 19 years on, it's got a Scotch Malt Whisky Society label and a thirst for that...

Score 90/100

North British 21 Year Old 1995 North Star Spirits

North Star Spirits is fast becoming one of my favorite independent bottlers. So far, all the stuff I have tried from them has been top notch. In May 2017 they released a single grain from the Lowland distillery North British – just outside Edinburgh – that matured for 21 long years. North British has no official bottlings to speak of, because the...

Score 84/100