A few indie Auchentoshan


September 24, 2025

A few indie Auchentoshan

To be honest, we hardly see any official Auchentoshan releases on our own little radar these days. It used to be a great brand—distinctive, likeable—and back in the 1990s, it even seemed to be massively successful.

Apart from Springbank with their Hazelburn, Auchentoshan is the only distillery in Scotland to do triple distillation, aside from a few intermediate regimes or experimental cases elsewhere. (Auchentoshan)

But now, only the indie bottlers seem to have taken up the torch, at least among the top decile (that’s supposed to be you and me). So, let’s wipe away our tears and enjoy a few independent releases, keeping hope alive....

Auchentoshan 1998/2024 (43.4%, Malts of Scotland, Rare Casks, sherry hogshead, cask #MoS 24011, 166 bottles)

Colour: deep gold. Nose: heaps of stewed fruits and gallons of sweet wine, pineau, ratafia and all that sort of thing. Then come old kirsch and marzipan, Mozart kugeln, and finally plum eau-de-vie. There’s wood too—balsa, cedar, sandalwood—but it’s all rather discreet. Mouth: a lovely balance between finely integrated yet very present oakiness, and those stewed fruits just mentioned above, all rounded off with cappuccino, macchiato, and above all a very fine pu-ehr tea, which is quite the rarity in a Lowlander. Except perhaps at St Magdalene… Finish: good length, increasingly on teas and herbal infusions, especially rosehip. Comments: a very interesting and entertaining dialogue between cask and distillate, most successful though just ever so slightly... fragile, still.
SGP:651 - 86 points.

Auchentoshan 2000/2022 (52.9%, Malts of Scotland, Rare Casks, bourbon barrel, cask #MoS 22040, 183 bottles)

Colour: white wine. Nose: much simpler, much purer, but we are simple folk and our soul is pure, so we rather prefer it this way. Blackcurrant juice, cranberry and pomegranate, all rounded off with acacia honey. Tempted? With water: fresh sugarcane juice and even a hint of pineapple. Mouth (neat): pure Auchentoshan from the house of Auchentoshan & Sons. Wonderfully fruity, with majestic blackcurrant in the lead and mirabelle plums in tow. With water: even fresher, this time with prickly pear and a wee hint of pink grapefruit. Finish: not very long, but pristine and fruity. Comments: a style that’s vanishing—give it twenty years and we’ll mourn its passing.
SGP:641 - 88 points.

Auchentoshan 26 yo 1997/2024 (47.3%, The Whisky Blues, refill barrel, cask #101749, 135 bottles)

Colour: chardonnay. Nose: a sharper version, more citrus-led, on sauvignon blanc, sorrel, and also sourdough, bitter almonds, even button mushrooms. Picture a carpaccio of Paris mushrooms drizzled with lemon and olive oil. Magical, despite the faintest whiff of coconut that emerges after a few seconds. Mouth: close to the previous one, the fruitiness is perfect—refined, fresh, outrageously elegant, enriched with fresh hazelnuts and macadamias, then just a hint of lemon balm. All very ‘Auchentoshan’. Finish: not very long, but the fruit is of great finesse. A little melon appears. Comments: we ought to start a petition against the disappearance of this style. The official releases turbo-charged with wood would make a brick weep.
SGP:651 - 88 points.

Auchentoshan 2007/2024 (54.1%, Maltbarn, sherry cask, 172 bottles)

Sherry! It’s true that there once were some older official ‘sherried’ versions that were downright superb—but those were distilled back in the 1960s. That was a while ago. Colour: gold. Nose: pâtisseries, scones, almond croissants, raisin rolls, streusels, rhubarb tart. There you have it. With water: no major changes, quite the opposite—it folds in a little, back towards the wood. But gently so. Mouth (neat): grated orange zest, grated lemon zest, cédrat liqueur and limoncello spritz with honey. There. With water: no, best not, perhaps a single drop. It starts to come apart a little. Finish: now we’re back, fruity, fresh, with a little more liquorice. As with honey and citrus, liquorice rescues many a whisky from the sink. But that’s not the case here, this is a very fine young Auchentoshan, so long as you don’t add water. Comments: this sensitivity to dilution is quite striking, but all the same it’s a superb Lowlander. The sherry is merely incidental.
SGP:551 - 85 points.

Auchentoshan 1999/2024 (52.1%, The Whisky Agency, barrel, 149 bottles)

Colour: gold. Nose: rose petals, Turkish delight, coconut balls, quince, this is all so unmistakably ‘Auchentoshan’! With water: pure multivitamin fruit juice. Especially white peach and mango. Mouth (neat): magnificent. There’s an old-school leaning here, reminiscent of pure pot still Irish. Honestly, had you said Redbreast, I’d have said bravo, one point to you and a free beer at a festival. Or a family-sized daiquiri. With water: now we’re veering towards Alsatian late-harvest riesling. Sadly, those are almost extinct. Finish: continues in the same vein but beware, water should be used with extreme moderation here as well. Comments: one does wonder why the overwhelming majority of independent Auchentoshan bottlings come from Germany. Any idea? Just a matter of distribution channels? At any rate, this one is utterly excellent, but then again, we expected nothing less.
SGP:651 - 89 points.

Check the index of all Auchentoshan we've tasted