This edition of The Balvenie’s Stories range is a 27-year-old single malt. From the Banffshire distillery comes A Rare Discovery from Distant Shores, a celebration of the friendship, creativity, and imagination that The Balvenie prides itself on. This expression is finished in Caroni rum casks, which have given the expression its wonderfully unique flavour profile. The malt arrives at a strength of 48% abv.

Manuka honey and underripe banana are present on the indulgent nose. Maple syrup, toffee, and vanilla all mingle on the particularly smooth and sumptuous palate. This smoothness continues into the long and wonderfully sweet finish.

The perfect dram to enjoy with your nearest and dearest.

The Story of the Coopers: The Balvenie celebrates its on-site cooperage for this edition from their coveted limited-edition Stories collection. It tells the tale of expertise, intuition and the craft of coopering itself, where their experienced coopers are on a quest to unlock the potential of each cask.

This expression has been aged solely in European oak Oloroso sherry casks, to highlight Head Cooper Ian McDonald’s travels to Spain to exchange skills with those working in bodegas. After a 19-year slumber, the liquid was bottled in 2023 at 47.5% abv.

Expect a nose of intense ripe fruits and orange peel with layers of toasted oak and milled barely. The palate is bold and balanced, with flavours of currants, cherries, fig and chocolates that give way to a lengthy creamy and nutty finish.

View The Balvenie Stories Collection

A beautiful expression from Glentauchers. The expression spent eleven years ageing in oak casks and was finished in cognac casks before bottling at 46% abv. 

A fantastic new exclusive to The Whisky Shop, this limited-release from Berry Bros. & Rud is a 15 year old liquid from Islay bottled under the name ‘Williamson’, a nod to Bessie Williamson who owned a certain world-famous Islay Distillery during the 20th century. 

Bottled at 56% abv, this brooding Islay dram opens with a nose of smouldering driftwood and oily rags, layered with cracked back pepper and sea soaked rope. The palate brings boiled lemon sweets and brine-laced peat, unfolding into clove-studded ham and tarred oak, with a striking note of aromatic camphor. The finish is long and medicinal, lingering with unapologetically bold phenolic peat smoke. 

A fabulous rare 27-year-old expression from Ben Wyvis. The single malt was matured from 1976 until 1999 before being bottled at 43% abv. Just 471 bottles of this dram were produced.

Please note: This bottle is from a private collection.

Personally selected by Master Blender Rachel Barrie from the Benriach eclectic cask collection, each Cask Edition is drawn from a single cask, chosen for exceptional taste and character.

Distilled on 7th July 1997 and aged for 24 years in a virgin oak barrel before bottling in 2021 at a cask strength 53.2% abv and limited to 244 bottles.

Aromas of red apple, cinnamon, honey and toasted oak lead to a palate of honeycomb, caramelised demerara sugar and warming oak spice.

Personally selected by Master Blender Rachel Barrie from the Benriach eclectic cask collection, each Cask Edition is drawn from a single cask, chosen for exceptional taste and character.

Distilled on 16th June 1997 and aged for 24 years in a rum barrel before bottling in 2021 at a cask strength 53.6% abv and limited to 166 bottles.

Aromas of golden rum, waxy pineapple and coconut cream lead to a palate of apple, raisin, cinnamon, candied lemon and dark chocolate.

Explore the full flavour possibilities of a complex single malt with this inaugural bottling of Benriach Malting Season. This expression is a celebration of the time-honoured tradition of malting the barley by hand on Benriach’s iconic Speyside malting floors. After being steeped in water and spread across the malting room, the barley is turned by hand over several days to help the barley germinate. This is a highly skilled process that harkens back to the 19th century, when the Benriach Distillery was founded in 1898.

The first edition of the ‘Malting Season’ small batch release is comprised of 23 barrels, with spirit distilled on 2nd November 2012 from concerto barley, yielding 6672 bottles in total at a strength of 48.7% abv. With a cask-imparted barley gold colour, it is double matured in ex-bourbon and American virgin oak casks. For each annual release in this series Master Blender Rachel Barrie will select the variety of barley and appropriate bottling strength meaning each edition will be completely unique.

On the palate there are notes of vanilla barley sugars, warm poached apples, almond fudge and honeyed pear. The finish is long and luxurious with a lasting nuttiness from the slowly kilned malt. This is the first bottling of an expression made in this hands-on process by Benriach for over one hundred years. And in cases like this it is sometimes appropriate to say – ‘out with the new, and in with the old’.

Using concerto barley that was hand malted within Benriach’s renewed malting floor in 2013, before being gently kilned, this liquid (bottled at 48.9% abv) was matured in first-fill ex-bourbon casks.

Expect a sweet and malty liquid with notes of vanilla ice cream, honey cereal and barley sugar.