Signatory Mortlach 1st Fill Ex-Bourbon (Casks 800084 and 800085) Bottled 2019

I recently purchased from the Book Depository, a beautiful reprint of “The Whisky Distilleries of the United Kingdom” by Alfred Barnard, originally published in 1887. The book is a journal of his travels throughout every whisky distillery district in the United Kingdom. As well as describing the distilleries in great detail, the book includes the most exquisite illustrations of the distilleries.

Comparing this to an early 20th century photograph, his illustrations seem remarkably accurate.

Photo taken from The Whisky Exchange Mortlach Page

I remember, when I was growing up in Britain, that 19^th century Victorian history was taught from the perspective of the two extremes. That is, the upper classes and the aristocracy, and from the perspective of the very poor and working class. The working middle classes were almost totally ignored.

To that end, it was intriguing getting a glimpse into Victorian life, giving us a unique snapshot of Britain in the 1880s from the viewpoint of the working middle classes.

Alfred Barnard is a name that will be well recognised by anyone who has ever read a book on whisky as his book is frequently referenced in almost all of them. Consequently, I thought it was important to purchase this reprint of the book, if not to read from cover to cover, to at least use for for my own reference purposes.

"The Book Depository" offers free postage and packaging to Israel but delivery is through the Israel Postal Company (“Doar Yisrael”) whose service is, I’m sorry to say, not 100% totally dependable, sometimes sending me an SMS upon the book’s arrival at the pickup point, other times leaving you totally in the dark. Sometimes sending the parcel to an independent shop acting as an agent pickup point, other times the parcel ends up at the local Postal branch. I’ve had books arriving 10 days after ordering and others after 8 weeks!!!

Alfred Barnard informs us that the Mortlach distillery was established in 1823. After describing his multiple modes of transport in order to get to the distillery, (just outside the town of Dufftown, Keith in Banffshire), and the surrounding scenery, he proceeds to describe the distillery itself.

“and consists of an irregular pile of buildings on the right and left of the principle gateway. The barley lofts are 360 feet, and the Maltings 300 feet long, with a Kiln floored with metal plates, and where peat only is used in drying the malt…….there is a capital range of Warehouses, which contained 2,000 casks of Whisky at the time of our visit. The water used in distilling comes from the Conval Hills and the famed Priest Well, and is of excellent quality…..The Whisky is Highland Malt, and the annual output is 85,000 gallons.”

In fact, it reads pretty much like any modern book on Scottish Distilleries. It is fascinating to look back and see which distillery survived and which didn't.

The Question of Regions

Notice that Alfred Barnard calls it “Highland Malt” as the Speyside region, situated within the Highlands of Scotland, had not been recognised as yet as a separate entity, as it is today.

In fact, there is talk within the industry of completely scrapping the whole idea of regions as an antiquated grouping system of artificially imposing common flavour characters on single malts distilled in the same region. In truth, distilleries are capable and very often do produce whisky completely out of character to their so called region. Historically, many claim that the regions were in fact TAX regions, with nothing to do with common flavours. This isn’t 100% true as historically, there were common factors such as whether peat was or was not used for malting barley, which was dependent upon the rail transport system (or lack of), in that region.

My opinion is that whilst it is true that the character of the whisky cannot and should not be determined and enforced by the whisky region, nevertheless, splitting the distilleries up into regions, makes it easier to identify groupings of distilleries in the same graphical area, which aids planning visits to those areas, but simply because there are so many distilleries today (and more, Baruch Hashem opening all the time) that you need a system of groupings and if there is already one in place fulfilling its role, why get rid of it?

There is also some argument as to what to recognise as a region. Campbeltown, which used to be called the Whisky City, with around 30 distilleries in its heyday, went down to only two distilleries in the 1920s. In order to maintain its status as a whisky region, the owners of Springbank decided to resurrect the old long ago abandoned distillery of Glengyle to bring the figure up to three! That they thought would be sufficient to maintain its status as a separate region. In fact, if you go there, you will find that, (despite how it appears on the maps), Glengyle is actually another building at the back of the courtyard on Springbank distillery, similar to Brora and Clynelish, which also share a common courtyard, despite their separate branding.

This map is © Mordechai Bendon

There is also some confusion as to what constitutes an “official” region. Most agree that there are “The Lowlands”, “The Highlands and within that region, there is a bubble called “Speyside” where we have a large grouping in one small area, recognised strangely as a separate region.

“The Scotch Whisky Association does not officially recognise “The Islands” as a single region yet most whisky books do, for convenience sake, group the islands together, despite the fact that the Orkney islands is North East of mainland Scotland, the Outer Hebrides are North East and in Inner Hebrides are south east.

Moreover, seeing as the island of Islay, despite its tiny size, has currently 10 distilleries (and this time next year, possibly as many as 11 or 12), making it trully “The Whisky island”, many consider this a separate region in itself. Additionally, some books split "The Highlands" up even further by making "Northern Highlands" a seperate region, due to the unique character of these northerly distilleries.

Mortlach Whisky

Alfred Barnard describes Mortlach whisky as heavy and peaty despite. What I find interesting from his description is Mortlach’s continued use of peat despite being close to the Highlands railway and a coal source to malt its barley. This is in total contrast to other distilleries in that region at the time who had already switched over to coal to fire their kilns to malt their barley and heat their stills, and were producing a much lighter, fruitier and floral spirit.

Today, Mortlach still has the reputation of being the strange atypical Speyside distillery with heavy, sulphur feinty, meaty whisky. So much so that it has acquired the nickname “The Beast of Dufftown”. This meaty heavy whisky flavour may not only be due to the type of distillations but may also be due to the fact that Mortlach is almost exclusively matured in Ex-Sherry casks.

Because of this, I have never tasted a Mortlach before as there has never been an Ex-Bourbon official bottling of Mortlach. So, in order to sample this “Beast “, I needed to turn to independent bottler’s “Signatory” who have released this double cask 1^st Fill Ex-Bourbon (Casks no.’s 800084 and 800085), distilled 13/03/2008 and bottled 18/03/2019, that is, exactly 11 Years old!

Like all Signatory releases, it is bottled straight from the cask(s) at natural cask strength (in this case, 57.8% abv), no added colouring and non-Chill Filtered.

Signatory Independent Bottlers are owned by Edradour Distillery Company.

The packaging is most impressive with a solid metal canister in an elliptical shape tube. The bottle shape really stands out above the crowd with a chunky glass giant perfume style bottle. What is most striking is the absolutely massively exaggerated size of the cork stopper, looking more like a cross between a Mexican sombrero and a Chasidishe Streimel.

In fact, the stopper is so big, you could use it as really cool Glencairn glass cover.

Like so many of these Independent Cask Strength bottlings, one must not judge the contents upon first opening the bottle. These whiskies need a lot of time to settle down and acclimatize. This for many is one of the fun things about these products but for others, with less time and patients, it will prove quiet definitely a minus point. If you are after a whisky with instant approachability, then steer well clear of these types of bottles.

Appearance

This Ex-Bourbon matured Mortlach has the colour of apple cider. The liquid has a medium to high viscosity and swirling the spirit around in my Glenmorangie Copita glass, you clearly see the effects of the high alcohol by the globules of whisky which stick to the inside of the glass, forming chains of beads around the circumference.

Upon first opening this bottle it was almost impossible to nose it. Even adding a substantial amount of water failed to tame this beast until it was totally drowned and lifeless. I decided to wait a week….

Mortlach notes after 1 week

Warehouse musky

Honey cake

Vanilla custard

Apples

Apple orchard after a heavy rainfall.

Green leafy.

Slight Sulphur-ey white wine.

 

Mortlach tasting notes after 2 months

Rich aromas

Really pleasant sweet musty warehouse smells

Fresh rain in a garden

Fresh oaky wood smells

Wet wood.

Yellow Apple strudel and raisins,

Burnt toffee

Brown toffee apples

Rich fresh out oven Wet apple and honey and granulated sugar on top pastries

 

Earthy Smell of Honey.

Slightly smelly flowers.

Sour apple note

Heavy sweet cider scrumpy.

Raw bitter almonds.

 

On the Finish.

The combination of rich sugary apple strudel and bitter almonds is delightful. Rich, heavy, buttery biscuit, honey and oven baked oak on the medium finish.

 

Conclusions:

 

This is certainly not an easy going whisky and needs patience and time to get the most from it. It is certainly not for a newbie and probably not recommended to the experienced but casual whisky drinker either. Did I enjoy my time with this Signatory? Yes. Would I buy it again or similar Mortlach cask? Probably not. However, because of the intrinsic quality of Signatory bottlings, I would definitely consider buying another Signatory bottling of something else which is not readily available in kosher casks.