North Port Brechin G&M 1970 Vintage

North Port, Brechin, North Port Brechin or even Townhead distillery? A distillery unsure of its own name risks falling by the wayside. And let that just be what happened. The East-Highland town of Brechin used to be home to two farm-sized operations, neither of them an oil painting: Glencadam and North Port. While the renovated Glencadam survived the murderous 80’s, the whisky crisis swallowed North Port whole. Her buildings razed to the ground for a supermarket and her name banished to the annotations of whisky history.

According to the Gordon & MacPhail label it is a North Port single malt by the Brechin distillery. Well then, here is my modest attempt to rehabilitate the old Brechin distillery.

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Description: distilled in 1970, presumably bottled in 1990 at age 20 by Gordon & MacPhail for the Connoisseurs Choice brown label range.

Nose: quite light and fresh for such an old dram. Aroma-wise it is fruity, but in a synthetic way: lemon fresh wipes, peach flavoured yoghurt, with soft wood smoke and limestone.

Mouth: a fatty body with a soft fizz on the tongue. Notes of bitter lemon balm on the palate, candy sugar, bitter oak and a gust of white pepper.

Finish: in complete contradiction to the palate, we get a mix chestnuts, notes of caramel and mocha coffee.

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Verdict: a simple whisky, yet a bit out of the ordinary. Thus another benchmark in my quest for the rare and interesting. Unique enough to justify the astronomical price of a sample/miniature you ask? No, if trying at least one of each distillery is not in your goals, there are better ways to spend your well earned money on contemporary and lost distilleries.

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