Ardmore 1996 (Gordon MacPhail)

Independent bottlers Gordon & MacPhail have recently launched a campaign ‘The wood makes the whisky’ .

Contrary to smaller bottlers, who simply buy mature casks, G&M buy young spirit and are responsible for the maturation themselves. As they explain on the excellent website, the essence of their work is matching spirit with the right type of oak , curating the maturation process and getting the result they were imagining.

To underscore the importance of casks and the different outcomes of European / American oak, bourbon / sherry fill, cask sizes, they provided four samples with different profiles. We’ll start with...