Celebrations and old bottles


September 13, 2025

Angus's Corner
From our correspondent and
skilled taster Angus MacRaild in Scotland

Celebrations and old bottles!

Every so often, whisky gives me a necessary reminder of why I love it and why I stay devoted to it. Last weekend in Edinburgh, I gathered with old friends to open a great selection of old bottles and simply celebrate together.

On top of that, I've been kindly sent quite a few very tantalising samples of old bottles recently, which means there's probably a fair few very silly tasting sessions coming up full of old bottles on Whiskyfun. As we often point out on these pages, we are not masochists, and we rather like to taste whiskies that we think will bring us pleasure and joy.

I've been tasting old and rare bottles for over twenty years now (not continuously). In fact, the first bottle that really switched me on to old style whisky was an old Lagavulin 12yo White Horse bottling, poured from the boot of an anonymous Belgian enthusiast's car in the carpark at Ardbeg when I was working there as a tour guide around May 2005. Since that time, I have undeniably been very fortunate to taste the selection of whiskies that I have, largely thanks to a small legion of generally older friends who benefitted from a smaller, more innocent, early era of whisky culture and its associated lower prices and were able to accumulate quite considerable stashes of these amazing bottles and naturally to open and share them as well. Off the back of that experience I was able to incorporate working with old and rare whiskies in my professional life, initially by working in auctions, and latterly by exhibiting at festivals. It meant I was able to continue to search for and open such amazing historic bottles.

Nowadays I do far less of that work, which is a bit of a shame but understandable given the now extremely steep prices commanded by these sorts of bottles and their general level of scarcity - which is noticeably much greater than 15-20 years ago.

	It makes events like this past weekend - the excuse for which was three of us had milestone birthdays this year, including my 40th - all the more special and provided opportunity for meaningful reflection on these amazing old-style whiskies and upon their continuing potency as agents of friendship.
	Some rare Securo caps. Securo caps were a type of tamper-evident, child-resistant closure sometimes used on spirits more than sixty years ago.

I'll take this opportunity to offer a few musings and observations about old bottles in this present day.

1: They are still - frequently - great! This might seem a bit obvious, but I think it bears repeating that old bottles retain a power to dazzle, to shock and stop you in your tracks with sheer force of quality and beauty that almost no modern whiskies possess to the same degree. History and emotion are undoubtedly a part of this, but this would not be the case if the liquid itself was not profound in difference and quality. There are of course often flaws, issues, problems arising from age in simple glass bottles (let alone strange capsules), but the underlying essential quality of these old bottles is that they show 'old style' malt whisky, of an era and character that is shockingly distinct from their modern counterparts. This point can't be laboured enough in my view.

2: That being said, there's more and more tricky problems with old bottles. I would say, over the past twenty years of opening hundreds of these bottles, I notice that more and more of them display funny notes associated with old bottle effect, or capsule taint. More of these whiskies appear a little tired; some show increasingly common soapy notes; blends in particular really diverge from each other depending on volume of malt content and closure type. It serves to highlight the ones that show incredibly well and really stand the test of time, it's just that those, in my view, are becoming scarcer.

3: There are bottles that can last over a century in bottle and show magnificently. But to achieve this they tend to require a good quality cork closure as this was the best material for preservation at the time, be either wholly or mostly single malt, and it helps if they have a good amount of peat influence and a higher than 43% bottling strength.

4: Screw caps and spring caps can be incredible preservers of filling level, but even in those instances the preservation of the spirit - due to the non-inert materials used in the manufacture of these capsules in that era - can be something of a lottery.

5: Anything bottled above 46% gives immense power of preservation to a spirit, but it does not necessarily insulate it from developing strange characteristics in the bottle. Not even cask strength can ultimately protect a spirit from influence over the course of decades in a glass bottle - although, on average, the most brilliant and well-preserved historic whiskies I've tasted, tended to be those bottled at much higher ABVs.

6: Old Bottle Effect (OBE), remains a distinct phenomenon that I would characterise as separate from other issues with old bottles like loss of ABV, filling level, loss of potency etc. To me, OBE is generally negative and tends toward specific flavour characteristics that are usually vegetal, porridge and cardboard staleness. These profiles are most noticeable in lower malt content blends from the 1960s and 1970s, but they are also increasingly found in single malts of many types, although still most commonly larger batch, lower ABV official bottlings of single malts.

7: I also think it is clear, after over twenty years of tasting modern and old bottles, that whisky does develop positively in bottle. I think this is separate from OBE described above. To me, this is when whiskies develop greater subtlety and complexity in bottle and digest some of their rougher edges that they would have possessed at point of bottling. Elevation of fruit flavour and sub-division of peat character are key hallmarks of this process in my experience. This seems to require around twenty years to become noticeable. I observe it in bottles I was already very familiar with a couple of decades ago when I revisit them now. This was most striking to me last week when re-tasting some early Special Releases bottlings (Oban 1984, Brora 30yo 1st release) that I hadn't tried for a number of years.

8: Of course, all of that stuff about OBE, bottle ageing etc, is heavily anecdotal; humans also change as we age, our sense of smell and perception of flavour etc, the funny tricks played by memory. Despite many sensible, science-based theories about what 'should' and 'could' happen to different types of whisky during decades in glass, there remains no known studies around this subject, and it is indeed an incredibly hard subject to study objectively and accurately. If anyone fancies a crack at it...

9: There isn't much else quite like getting together to open something utterly remarkable and ancient bottles that nobody has tasted in decades; this goes for most alcohols, not just whisky. Life, for me, is about experience, so the sense of sharing a piece of history in the moment together is hard to beat. Old style whisky is uniquely suited to this, it's one of the reasons why these bottles command such high prices and why they are valued by so many people around the world: a sense and possibility of connection to the past and, if opened, a window into it.

10: These old bottles often improve dramatically with just a week or so once opened. It creates a dilemma we've often commented upon when we get together to crack open bottles: if we wanted to experience them together at their best, we should probably open them a couple of weeks early, decant them and then put them back into their bottle for serving. But in doing so, you lose that shared moment of revelation. Part of the joy of these whiskies remains the unknown, the suspicion and hope that they might reveal something utterly wonderful, the risk taken and sense of reward and shared discovery if you're all there together at the point that screw cap is cracked or that dusty, gnarly old cork is excavated from the bottle for the first time. It's why we always save them and open them as a group, and why we always observe that "this is amazing, think how good it will taste in a couple of months.... can you save me a sample?"

11: If you're reading this and you're familiar with these experiences, we are all pretty damn lucky to be able to do such things and it's worth reflecting on that I think.

This week we'll just start with...

Glenlivet 15 yo (100 proof, Gordon & MacPhail, securo cap, bottled early 1960s)
Securo caps are probably one of the best ever preservers of filling level in a bottle and they are also a dream for anyone who has to date old bottles as they were used only around 1962-1963. Many wonderful older malts were sheltered behind what I believe deserves the title of 'geekiest whisky bottle closure'. Colour: deep gold. Nose: so old style it makes you chuckle! Seriously, this is like muton stew, old bouillon broth, very old burgundy, roast pheasant, natural tar liqueur, resinous fir woods and all manner of oils: motor, lamp, olive - you name it! Also hugely camphory, full of herbal liqueur notes, dried out old honeys going towards beeswax and cask aged mead. Amazing! With water: stunningly herbal and mentholated, really going towards complex old herbal tea, medicinal properties, ointments, boot polish, tiny inclusions of peat, tar, eucalyptus and more of these wonderful umami broths. Mouth: astonishingly powerful, almost brutal but at the same time brilliant! Ruggedly earthy, extremely salty, and more dominated by classical, bone dry old sherry notes. Think big dry old oloroso full of rancio! Some cedar wood boxes full of aged cigars and reams of hessian. We should also mention the texture as well, which is so huge you could stand an Elephant on stilts in the glass! With water: magnificent and just more of everything, same texture but broader, more emphatic herbal, waxy, gamey, earthy and honeyed characteristics. More of these salty, rugged old VORS sherry vibes and some stunning tertiary earthy notes. Finish: very long, elegantly drying, salty, earthy and showing more classical sherry cask influence once again. Comments: Amazing, decidedly old-style malt whisky of immense texture, body and charisma that rewards, nay, requires patience and several drops of water.
SGP: 562 - 93 points.

Glenlivet 1945 (100 proof, Gordon & MacPhail, securo cap, bottled early 1960s)
An even rarer vintage-stated version at classic 100 proof bottling strength, which equates to 57.1% in today’s ABV. Colour: gold. Nose: please see my comments about capsules above! This bottle had a perfect filling level when opened, probably in never lost a single millilitre in 60+ years in glass. And yet, this whisky has gathered an undeniably funk that feels like a profile we've encountered before with old screw caps and spring caps in particular. Loads of forest mushrooms, baked vegetables, hints of carboard, metal polish, medicinal roots, old copper coins leather bags but also behind that some very similar characteristics to the 15yo, with big impressions of cask aged mead, huge waxiness, herbal medicinal and liqueur-ish properties. With water: cider apple funk that suggest young calvados, alongside more wild mushrooms, more aged game meats, pinot noir, truffle, mead, more metal polish and old sooty iron coal hearths. Mouth: it's really two whiskies at the same time, on the negative side this funkiness and funny vegetal side extends to the palate and delivers some grubbiness and muddy notes. On the positive side, it's very close in texture and fatness to the 15yo, with similar magnificent saltiness, tar, waxes and herbal flavours. With water: at its cleanest with water, but still a challenging beast of opposing personalities. Some stunningly salty and peaty flavours coming through with more assertion and precision now, also touches of mint, big camphor and more chunky earthy notes. Finish: very long, immensely long in fact, glowing warm with peaty, sooty, earthy and medicinal rooty notes. Liquorice, caraway and hessian jumbled up in the aftertaste. Comments: it's almost impossible to score a bottle such as this, pure history in a glass that your emotions and intellect could convince you was somehow in perfect condition. But this perfectly illustrates my point above about old bottles increasingly being something of a lottery. Now, I would say water helps a lot here and is in fact essential but overall it remains incredible to try, but very hard to score. You can easily see how another bottle without these funny capsule-induced funky notes might easily fetch 93-94 points.
SGP: 562 - 85 points.

Glenlivet 27yo 1954/1981 (46%, Cadenhead Dumpy, sherry)
It's always tricky with old bottles to know which way around to taste them. In this case, I decided on youth and strength before age and grace... Colour: deep ruby/mahogany. Nose: sweet featherless Vishnu! A collusion of the most glorious ancient Armagnac and the most incredible low-ester Jamaican rum. Also some kind of otherworldly sherry-induced lusciousness. The whole is drenched is plump, sweet, sumptuous dark fruits: plums, damsons, figs, prunes, sultanas - the whole ruddy spectrum of fruit is in here. Also freshly brewed black coffee of the most sublime quality, fermented tobacco, tiny hints of medicinal tinctures and dark chocolate studded with sea salt. In truth, this is immediately one of those whiskies that is a total, perfectly cohesive whole which simply dazzles you. I find this kind of aromatic depth, intensity and beauty utterly poetic. Mouth: pure green walnut liqueur, miso paste, tar liqueur, Maggi and yet more mind-boggling dark fruitiness, acidity, ancient rancio-drenched old Armagnac re-appears once again. In truth, it's hard to describe and probably pointless to try. The sort of whisky that puts food on the table for those Anti-maltoporn brigade folk. The rest is censored. Finish: also censored, we'd be here all week! Comments: Older style malt whisky distillate of stunning quality, paired with a once in a lifetime sherry cask (probably drenched in pajarete for all I know) and done no harm at all by nearly 40 years in bottle. You can't ask for much more than this from a sherry matured malt whisky in my view.
SGP: 652 - 95 points.

Bonus Dram!

Balblair 8 yo (100 proof, Gordon & MacPhail, securo cap, bottled early 1960s)
I have no suitable sparring partner for this Balblair and, as it was opened together with the Glenlivets above and also a securo cap, it seems a shame not to include it here. Colour: gold. Nose: a profile that just cannot belong to whiskies distilled after the 1960s in my experience. Instantaneously fatter, thicker and more muscular distillate on display, dominated by honeys, waxes, camphor and, in the case of this wee Balblair, subtle notes of dried and exotic fruits. In fact, these wee fruity signatures do make you think of Balblair's usual fruitiness. Also background hints of engine oil, herbal tea, kumquat and bone marrow - quite the medley! With water: the coastal qualities come to dominate more decisively now, a beautiful freshness, salinity, still immensely muscular and punchy and with a sharper, more lively fruit profile on display. Water really seems to awaken freshness in this one. Mouth: extremely powerful, here you realise this is really a young whisky with these big spicy notes, jagged, almost rough, waxy qualities, fat oiliness, big hints of camphor, paraffin, stoney mineral qualities, tar and more things like marrow, umami broths, herbal teas and toolbox rags. A whisky that sits equidistant between the workshop, the seashore and the forest. With water: astonishing thickness and waxiness in both flavour and texture. Old crystalised flower honey cut with motor oil and garnished with assorted green, yellow and exotic fruits. A whisky with the texture of old Drambuie almost! Finish: stunningly long, salty, camphory, with menthol notes of mint, pine resin and eucalyptus. Comments: a beast, but also a beauty. Astonishing power, and with water also an immense freshness is unlocked that really delivers something quite breath-taking. The thing I keep returning to with drams like this is the texture, the fatness and the sense of body. I'm delighted with this wee, old, young Balblair!
SGP: 563 - 94 points.

Thanks to all my great friends who came along last week! There will probably be more maltoporn to come in the next few weeks I'm afraid.