Tag: 1980s

Dram data:
Distillery: Longmorn-Glenlivet
Bottler: Gordon & Macphail, licensed bottling
Distilled: –
Bottled: 1980s
Age: 12 years
Limitation: –
Casks: –
Alcohol: 40
unknown colouring/filtering
Whiskybase link (similar, but older bottling)

There are things you just can’t say no to – like this wee old miniature bottle of whisky I stumbled across in Arkwright’s Wine and Spirit shop earlier this year. Who would pass on the opportunity to experience what whisky bottled decades ago tasted like? This was bottled in the 1980s as a licensed bottling by Gordon & Macphail, distilled in the 1970s – some of the new make might have even been produced when Longmorn was a distillery with only two stills and those were fired directly. Back then what we now call “Single Malt” was called “Pure Malt” and distilleries proclaimed their region by attaching “-Glenlivet” to their name. Those were the times – and they are now bottled history! Anyway, all of that means almost nothing if the whisky is bad, so let’s dive right in!

Tasting notes:
Colour: amber
The nose features a surprising amount of alcohol for a 40% whisky. Once the alcohol settles down, a dry, layered, spicy, sherried whisky is revealed. We’ve got orange peel, ginger, nutmeg, a whole truckload of cloves and cinnamon and dusty beeswax on a base of dried apricots and sulphured sultanas with a smidgen of motor oil on top (the good kind, you know…). Nicely layered and balanced, not flabby at all. We’re off to a very good start here.  Let’s check the palate!  Continue reading “Tasting: Longmorn-Glenlivet Pure Malt 12 yo (1980s)”