Coldorak's whisky blog.
We take a look at five Glenrothes today: two official bottlings and three independent releases from That Boutique-y Whisky Company, Cadenhead and Signatory. Building on last year’s enjoyable duo, I’ve dug out a few samples of older Glenrothes and opened a bottle acquired at auction some time ago. With that lineup ready, let’s get started.
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Glenburgie remains one of those Speyside names most whisky drinkers ‘know’ without actually knowing, quietly toiling away as a backbone malt for Ballantine’s rather than as a headline single malt in its own right. Official bottlings are still thin on the ground, so when you want to explore Glenburgie’s character in any depth, you inevitably end up rifling through the shelves of independent bottlers instead.
This line‑up is a neat illustration of that reality: at the younger end, an 8‑year‑old Gordon & MacPhail licence bottling that was about as close to ‘official’ as Glenburgie got for many years, thanks to G&M’s long‑standing agreement to bottle the distillery’s spirit under its own name. Opposite it, two mature Glenburgie 1995s from Signatory Vintage, both 30‑year‑old single casks from that famous mid‑ 90s parcel, promise a far more opulent, sherry‑accented take on the same DNA. Once again, then, we are relying on the independents to sketch out a portrait of a distillery that, despite its importance in blends, still barely speaks for itself on the official shelf.
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I hesitated for a moment to call this review “Threeninich”, but, in the end, these three Teaninichs deserved something a little more dignified. This set brings together a Teaninich 10-year-old Flora & Fauna, an 11-year-old bottled by Chorlton, and a 1983 Signatory Vintage bottling from 2011, three very different snapshots of a distillery that has spent most of its life working quietly in the background.
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We’ve already tried a few of the releases from the running Signatory Vintage 100 Proof series, but since they continue releasing many of those, let’s review seven out of the eight latest expressions in these series, with all the editions #70 to #77, with the exception of the #74 I couldn’t source. In our glasses today are whiskies from Caol Ila, Highland Park, Linkwood, Mortlach, Ben Nevis, Ledaig and Clynelish. We’ll go in release numbers ascending, so I guess I’ll need a pause in between some drams when going from potentially peated to unpeated!
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It’s already time for another Clynelish session, this time with five independent Clynelish bottlings, even though we reviewed three back in January. Then again, Clynelish is one of those distilleries we never seem to tire of – right up there with Ben Nevis and Springbank… and a few others.
Since my recent move, I’ve also taken the opportunity to reorganise my samples, even adding a four-drawer cabinet to give myself more room and increase storage capacity by 50%. Yet, as with bottles, I seem to acquire more samples than I can realistically drink. And because I still have a habit of wanting to write about every new whisky or spirit I try, while also tasting several at once for comparison, some drams inevitably end up waiting far too long for their turn.
Perhaps I should admit that not every bottle or sample needs a full review. That would certainly help keep the stock under control – and might even leave me with more time to simply enjoy whisky. In any case, today we’re turning to independent Clynelish from Cadenhead, Signatory, Silver Seal, Whisky Sponge and Masam, drawn from Silviano Samaroli stock. Let’s move the vintages up, shall we?
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It’s been a long time we had a Linkwood on More Drams, so let’s taste three of them, with a Linkwood 1979 from Vintage Malt and two 30-year-old from Signatory Vintage and the SMWS. And since, apart from a short intro a long time ago, we didn’t properly talk about Linkwood distillery’s history, let’s have an in-depth look at the distillery’s history.
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We move on to four more Caol Ila, ranging from 10 to 40 years old – partly because there’s no good reason not to, and partly because Caol Ila is hard to resist. After last week’s birthday, marked with two 47‑year‑old single grains that I reviewed on Monday, it feels only natural to keep the celebration going with a line‑up of both youthful and venerable Caol Ila.
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Almost a full year has slipped by since the last Clynelish review, so the time has come to revisit the distillery with a fresh trio. This line‑up brings together three Clynelish from Hunter Laing and Signatory Vintage, offering a neat snapshot across ages and cask approaches. The session opens with the youngster, a 2009 bottled by Hunter Laing, before moving on to compare two 1996 vintages from Signatory, drawn in 2016 and 2023, to show how extra years and different casks reshaped this famously waxy Highlander.
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On special days, I like to reach for something special, so I chose two Coleburn whiskies from Signatory Vintage for Christmas. After a lengthy cognac session from the Cognac-Expert 2025 Advent Calendar, I return to whisky. Coleburn has tempted me for ages, especially since my 2019 visit to Murray McDavid at Spirit of Speyside – where they lease the distillery’s warehouses for cask storage, though workers dismantled the site long ago. Sourcing Coleburn proved tough, yet I snagged two samples in days. As always, I’ll start with the distillery history before diving into these festive Signatory pours.
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Today we explore three independently bottled Glen Ord whiskies from Signatory Vintage and Chorlton Whisky, which we tasted during November’s Rennes Whisky Club session. Independent bottlers let us discover Glen Ord’s true taste, especially in Europe, since the official Singleton of Glen Ord bottlings target Diageo’s Asia-focused markets like Taiwan, Singapore, Southeast Asia, and travel retail. They do appear on the Special Releases, though. Let’s briefly discuss the distillery before reviewing this trio.
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