Old & Rare Tasting – Brighton, Thursday 4th December
On Thursday 4th December, the inaugural The Malt Library old & rare tasting was held at the fantastic The Brick pub in Brighton.
The tasting was a carefully curated selection of whiskies spanning from the 1960s up until the present day and included two lost distilleries. We kicked the proceedings off with a relatively new Wolfburn expression that was released in August 2025 – a limited edition 12 year old bottling to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the opening of the Dounreay Nuclear Power Reactor – Dr Eric Voice, father and grandfather to Chris and Alex was the first scientist to work at Dounreay. This 12 year old bottling was a combination of hand-selected second-fill Oloroso sherry butts and first fill ex-bourbon casks.
The second dram of the night was a 1960s bottling of the Chequers 12 year old blend, which features 1950s floor malted Linkwood at the heart of the blend. Special liquid indeed and remarkably active despite its 60 years in bottle. Prominent notes of marmalade, green orchard fruits, cinnamon and vanilla pods.
From there we explored two distillates that were at one point a stones throw from one another: an early 1980s bottling of the classic Dufftown 8 year old, full of dirty and oily notes of wood varnish, figs, dried mango slices and gentle liquorice. That was then subsequently followed up by some of the final liquid produced at the lost Pittyvaich distillery – a gently sherried 1993 vintage that was bottled at 16 years old by Gordon & MacPhail for their iconic Connoisseurs Choice range. A slightly waxy dram full of herbal notes, yellow fruits, cedar, green apples and pine sap.
The penultimate dram of the evening was a 1970s bottling of the Miltonduff 12 year old. This fantastic 1960s distillate was full of notes of prunes, beeswax, cinnamon, orange peels, walnuts and delicate mint.
To conclude the evening we finished with the final ghost of the night and one of our favourite distillates: Mosstowie – a malt produced on Lomond stills inside Miltonduff distillery from 1964 until 1981. The whisky we explored was a 1979 vintage bottled as part of the aforementioned Connoisseurs Choice in 2002. It was rich with notes of dried citrus peels, light espresso, musty bookshelves, aniseed, cloves and almond paste.
We would like to thank everyone who attended the evening and we can’t wait to host many more tastings in 2026.
