A few entirely random New Cats, a sequel


September 21, 2026

A few entirely random New Cats, a sequel

There are plenty of them, the pre-Covid tide having floated a great many ambitions and good intentions. And some are very good indeed, so let’s see what else we’ve got, entirely at random…

(Distilleries, we need photographs! See below...)

Holyrood 3 yo 2021/2024 (54.2%, Duncan Taylor, sherry hogshead, cask #12148, 382 bottles)

Holyrood 3 yo 2021/2024 (54.2%, Duncan Taylor, for Kirsch Import, sherry hogshead, cask #12148, 382 bottles)

The first new makes made from heritage barley varieties (Chevallier, for example) had impressed us greatly. Since then, we haven’t really kept up, and that’s our fault, so here’s a chance to make amends… Colour: deep gold. Nose: yes, barley, tapioca, polenta, white chocolate and sweetcorn. With water: very lovely shoe polish and bread dough. Mouth (neat): ah, very good, lively and lemony, with some excellent bitters and those famous green walnuts from the sherry (we imagine). With water: it remains close to nature, yeast, barley, beer etc. Finish: fairly long, increasingly on beer. After all, whisky is only distilled beer. Comments: we really do enjoy this yeasty side, it feels as though we’re vibrating in tune with nature. Really.
SGP:451 - 83 points.

Isle of Harris 2018/2025 ‘The Hearach Peated’ (58.6%, OB, 1st fill bourbon)

We’re behind the curve here too. What’s more, we like Isle of Harris and find the bottle rather amusing. Colour: pale white wine. Nose: lovely sharp peat, precise to the millimetre, pure and straightforward. Oysters, Barbour grease and lemon. With water: seaweed and virgin wool. Or a brand-new jumper from a proper maker, no junk fast-fashion-slow-brain. Mouth (neat): it’s more or less 45ppm peat and you can tell. Mercurochrome, concentrated lime juice, salted bitter almonds and grey pepper. With water: no major changes, apart from even more salinity. Finish: long, saline, yeasty, maritime. Comments: for lovers of fresh peat… and barley.
SGP:357 - 85 points.

Dornoch 2017/2021 (58.43%, OB, PX refill, cask #26a)

This micro bottling had been quietly resting on our shelves, so it was high time we dealt with it. Colour: gold. Nose: oh bother, fresh bread, candied lemon, a little charcoal, in short, nothing we don’t like. With water: ginger, lemon, ginseng. Mouth (neat): excellent, sharp, lively, lemony, spicy, peppery. With water: same. Multigrain bread with lemon. Finish: same, really. Comments: they must have chucked half a pallet of organic lemons into the wee cask. A costly strategy, certainly, but surely an effective one.
SGP:461 - 87 points.

Strathearn ‘Batch No.2’ (50%, OB, bourbon, virgin oak and sherry, 2025)

I believe they used 31 casks from the wee distillery to compose this baby, under the aegis of the current owners, of course, Douglas Laing. Colour: gold. Nose: very much on fresh bread, pumpkin seeds, damp earth, a little ginger, buckwheat flour, then tiny touches of lavender, very discreet, which do bring a little variety all the same. With water: pancakes! Mouth (neat): we find that little lavender-sweet side again, or perhaps violet sweets, then a whole assembly of cereals, with some slightly peppery oak. With water: a pumpernickel side, all that’s missing is some fresh butter. Finish: fairly long, even more on pumpernickel. Comments: very much about the raw materials, with the casks making their presence felt but marrying this lovely young profile rather well. I just think I’d been even more impressed by the inaugural batch (WF 87).
SGP:451 - 85 points.

A little advice now for all distilleries, especially the new ones, on top of those wonderful ‘automatic’ full-screen videos on your websites, it would be rather cool to add three or four proper photographs of the distillery that ‘bloggers’ such as this poor lost soul, armed with little more than a keyboard and questionable judgement, could use to illustrate their posts! Many thanks, and besides, it would spare everyone those heroic instamatic-style masterpieces or AI slop we occasionally produce ourselves, which, I’m quite certain, never quite do justice to the true beauty of your places. Thanks for your attention, we continue…

Aberargie ‘Inaugural’ (48.2%, OB, 2026)

Splendid, a new distillery on WF! And from Morrison Distillers. This first version is a 50/50 vatting of bourbon and sherry casks, and comes, of course, from Perthshire, with a mashbill giving pride of place to Golden Promise barley. Colour: gold. Nose: certainly very cereal-driven, but there are orchard fruits too, in a more, shall we say, civilised balance, perhaps rather more ‘Midlands’ in spirit. I’m thinking a little of Blair Athol… Mouth: very good indeed, with the sherry making more of a mark on the palate, walnut cake, spicy fruitcake (beerawecka), nougat, with touches of cinnamon and coffee. One tiny flash of ginger cookie, then a little pink grapefruit. Plenty going on in this youngster. Finish: long, less peppery than I’d expected, simply carrying on from the palate. Comments: well, for a first release, you rather get the impression there was no ‘test and learn’ period whatsoever… and that it would have been pointless anyway. Lovely texture, slightly oily.
SGP:551 - 86 points.

Dalmunach 8 yo 2016/2025 (60.7%, James Eadie, refill PX hogshead finish, cask #364526, 126 bottles)

Colour: light gold. Nose: very lively for PX, that must be the high strength. Green apple, freshly trimmed privet, a snapped branch… With water: fresh almonds, we love fresh almonds. Mouth (neat): ah, very good! Beautiful fruitiness, coherent, almost a little rounded, and yet taut as a bow at the same time. Apples and lemons in duet. With water: it remains just the same, and it’s very good. You even start wondering whether this wasn’t ‘seco’ PX. Finish: long, lively, still with apples and a very light menthol touch. Fennel. Comments: I wonder whether this wouldn’t work with oysters or smoked salmon. Careful with peaters alongside those things, it may sound obvious, but perhaps not quite as obvious as all that. In short, top Dalmunach.
SGP:551 - 87 points.

Glasgow 7 yo 2018/2025 (58.7%, Best Dram, 1st fill oloroso sherry butt finish, cask #18/1079, 651 bottles)

Colour: full gold. Nose: an ashtray at three in the morning, as they say, plus as many green walnuts as you’d find on a walnut tree. Some acridness. With water: it becomes rounder and more civilised, rather like a Viking longship returning to harbour after discovering table manners (what?) Walnut wine. Mouth (neat): it really lays it on thick, rather like the very young Ardbegs of the early 2000s. In short, it’s a little brutal, certainly very medical (rather than medicinal), and I’m sure it cures all manner of things, bruises, splinters, sprains, burns… With water: once again it softens, while retaining a lovely acrid edge that brings aubergines to mind. Grilled red peppers. Finish: very long, saltier, more peppery. Comments: frankly, it is a little brutal, but under these circumstances, we’re quite prepared to be (slightly) brutalised.
SGP:367 - 86 points.

Well, we’ve come this far…

Glasgow 9 yo 2016/2026 (57.9%, Le Gus’t, Vin de Paille, cask #244, 227 bottles)

We just write ‘Glasgow’ rather than ‘Glasgow Distillery’ because it seems fairly obvious to us that it isn’t a laundry or a charcuterie. Capeesh? Anyway, this one was matured in Vin de Paille casks from Lornet in Montigny-les-Arsures, a rather lovely place. Think Puffeney, Aviet/Bacchus, etc. But come on, this isn’t Winefun… Colour: amber. Nose: but who smoked the nougat? And the cassata? And who added bitter orange and toasted pine nuts? With water: I swear there are Jura ceps in there. A little gunflint too. Also, some pencil shavings. Mouth (neat): very lovely bitters, as in the Best Dram, plus a tangerine-peel side, chen-pi etc. With water: now the Vin de Paille really comes through, but via the tangerine. To make a great Vin de Paille you need plenty of acidity in the grapes, and that is precisely what we find here. Finish: rather long, softer, almost gentle. That’ll be the tangerine. Comments: truth be told, it’s a little intellectual, but this baby has digested the excesses of peat even better than the very good Best Dram.
SGP:565 - 87 points.

Glasgow 1770 2018/2023 ‘Cognac Cask Finish’ (52%, OB, batch #01, 1576 bottles)

But what on earth is it with Cognac and everyone in Scotland these days? Colour: white wine. Nose: finer peat, more ashes, smoked almonds, green apple juice… We’re reminded a little of that Islay distillery opposite the Paps. With water: grapefruit and lemongrass. Mouth (neat): very good, with this little smoked yellow peach side. I reckon they could try kilning bunches of folle blanche grapes, I do wonder what that would produce, if only as far as the wine itself is concerned. With water: we’re drifting a little towards pips now, not necessarily the best phase. And peach skin. Finish: medium to long, slightly saline. Comments: it’s very good, but with less majesty and sense of adventure than in that crazy Jurassic one from Le Gus’t.
SGP:553 - 84 points.

We’re getting rather attached to these little Glasgows, damn them…

Glasgow 1770 2018/2022 ‘Moscatel Cask Finish’ (55.3%, OB, cask #18/988, 336 bottles)

Glasgow 1770 2018/2022 ‘Moscatel Cask Finish’ (55.3%, OB, cask #18/988, 336 bottles)
Oops, moscatel, that ultra-sweet wine that rather ruined… Caol Ila. We mean the DE. The charming people at Glasgow say ‘limited edition’, and we’re wondering whether that might be… just as well. But we’re speculating, you never know, after all, the Vin de Paille, which isn’t a million miles away from moscatel, had worked extremely well. But enough waffle, let’s taste it. Colour: pale gold. That’s all right. Nose: that’s all right. Apple tart and quince jelly, with no smokiness whatsoever. A family-sized bag of marshmallows drizzled with a little honeyed wine. With water: fresh and lovely. Apple juice and honeysuckle. Mouth (neat): it works, phew! In short, no overly obvious moscatel, rather grapefruit with a little honey and white pepper. In fact, it’s devilishly taut for ex-moscatel. Or do they make ‘seco’ moscatel in Spain too? With water: very well put together, fresh, lively, with no heaviness whatsoever. Did I really read ‘moscatel’? Finish: very good, fresh, with chalk, to the point where it brings Chablis to mind more than… moscatel. Comments: the mysteries of malt whisky (and Spanish wines) are impenetrable.
SGP:651 - 85 points.

Come on, a little modern archaeology and then we’ll call it a day.

Dornoch 4 yo 2018/2022 (58.77%, OB, 1st fill bourbon octave, cask #6, 75 bottles)

Colour: gold. Nose: there’s no denying it, first-fill bourbon and slightly immature young malts are a love match. Marshmallow, mango jelly, vanilla pods, orange cake, verbena… The verbena is particularly prominent here. With water: macchiato and orange crème brûlée. Orange crème brûlée is an absolute killer. Mouth (neat): excellent. Citron liqueur, fresh turmeric, woodruff, but what was their secret? With water: ginger can often be tricky, but when it’s as elegant as this, it’s beautiful. Finish: same. Läckerli and aniseed bredala. An Alsatian thing. Then some very fruity young Comté. Comments: I’m really very impressed, and I’m only four years late. This time.
SGP:651 - 88 points.

Last-minute bonus!

Edradour No.2 8 yo 2018/2026 (57.1%, Signatory Vintage, Andrew Symington’s 40 years in the Whisky Industry, 1st fill Châteauneuf du Pape hogsheads)

Edradour No.2 8 yo 2018/2026 (57.1%, Signatory Vintage, Andrew Symington’s 40 years in the Whisky Industry, 1st fill Châteauneuf du Pape hogsheads)
A new baby unearthed directly at the distillery last Friday, from casks sourced from the iconic Château Mont-Redon, possibly recoopered as hogsheads. We had initially planned to add it to an Edradour session sometime over the next few weeks, but as the saying goes, never put off until tomorrow what you can do today. And Edradour No.2 really is a ‘new cat’, even if it is an almost exact replica of distillery No.1, which celebrated its bicentenary last year.

Colour: ripe apricot. Nose: there are indeed a few wee touches of leather, plum, black cherry, and even some discreet hints of lavender, but it is all integrated into the malt like two rivers meeting, their waters becoming impossible to tell apart (what?) Though the lavender grows increasingly prominent, but we are very much talking about the flower here, not the cosmetics and assorted perfumes made from it. In any case, this is lavender with nothing Bowmorian about it (1980s). With water: it does not move much and remains rather Provençal.

Mouth (neat): it is the slightly spicier side that comes out now, especially black pepper and liquorice, over the black cherries and, above all, a malt that is leaning increasingly towards bitter oranges. With water: it becomes rounder, while the distillate moves more to the front of the stage. Finish: the fusion continues. Cherry tart with cinnamon and a little pepper. The lavender has disappeared. Comments: a slightly disconcerting alliance at first, but a very excellent one in the end. A little Jagger/Richards, Lennon/McCartney, or even Page/Plant, in short. Make of that comment what you will. Happy 40th Anniverary, Andrew!
SGP:661 - 88 points.