Miltonduff 10 Year Old - Discovery (Gordon & MacPhail) (70cl, 43%)
This is a 10 year old single malt that has been bottled by Gordon & MacPhail. One of the starting points for whisky fans digging into Gordon & MacPhail's whiskies, the Discovery range is all about pulling apart the flavours of Scotland. This Miltonduff is part of the Sherry category, showing, as you'd expect, big sherry character thanks to 10 years of maturation in sherry casks.
Miltonduff is located in Speyside and is perhaps best known as one of the key malts in the Ballantine's blends. It was purchased by Hiram Walker in the 1930s, who installed the Lomond stills that briefly produced the now sought after Mosstowie single malts in 1964, but these were removed again in 1981. The distillery passed through the hands Allied Distillers before arriving with current owners, Pernod-Ricard, and despite its continued requirements for Ballantine's blends, official bottlings of its single malt have been deemed worthy of bottling by each of its proprietors, a sentiment shared by many independent companies too.
Gordon & MacPhail are one of the largest and most recognisable whisky companies in the world. Although they began distilling at the newly refurbished Benromach distillery in 1998, for most of their history they were an independent bottler. Their labels are recognised by whisky lovers the world over, and their licensed bottlings from distillery's like Macallan and Talisker in the 1970s and 1980s, when the companies were not bottling themselves, are a huge part of the success of those distillers today.