We continue our exploration of older blends, this time with three bottlings from the 1960s and 1970s: two Cluny releases and a C&J McDonald’s. The Cluny pair consists of a no-age-statement bottling from the 1960s and a five-year-old from the 1970s, followed by a C&J blend from the same decade. Let’s see how they compare.
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Blends From Old Times Part 1
Today marks the beginning of a short series exploring blended Scotch from an earlier era. By ‘earlier’, I mean bottlings from roughly the 1960s through to the 2000s, although the main focus will be on the 1960s and 1970s.
We begin with three blends: Teacher’s Highland Cream, which has (kind of) appeared on the blog before; VAT 69, the long-established William Sanderson blend first created in 1882; and Cameron’s Black Prince, a name that was entirely new to me. Teacher’s and VAT 69 were major historic brands with distinctive identities, while Black Prince offers a more obscure point of comparison.
The aim of this review, and of however many follow, is not simply to indulge in nostalgia. Instead, it is to look at these older bottlings on their own terms and consider the familiar question: was whisky really better in the past?
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Yamazaki Distillery Exclusive & Kogei Edition
It has been a while since I last reviewed Yamazaki, so today I’m adding two more expressions to More Drams. First is a Yamazaki Distillery Exclusive single malt that I bought at the distillery in 2018, followed by Yamazaki Peated Malt Spanish Oak from the Kogei Collection. The latter was initially launched for global travel retail.
Not long ago, obtaining both would have required a trip to Japan: a visit to Yamazaki Distillery for the Distillery Exclusive, assuming you were lucky enough to find one, as they were flying off the shelves because of their low price, then a stop at the airport for the Kogei release in a duty-free shop. Things have changed since then. This Distillery Exclusive is no longer available, while the Kogei Collection has become far easier to find through travel-retail and specialist channels, meaning there is at least one less reason to make a whisky-focused flight.
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Four Macallan 12 yo and a 20 yo Speymalt
Macallan has so far been something of a blind spot on More Drams Less Drama. We have only reviewed a pair of secret Macallans – both bottled by Le Gus’t – and they were, frankly, stunning. This time, however, there is no need for concealment: we are heading directly into one of Speyside’s most recognisable names, through four versions of the Macallan 12-Year-Old Sherry Oak Cask and a mature 2000 Speymalt from Gordon & MacPhail.
The four 12-year-olds should make for a particularly useful exercise in comparison. A whisky with such a fixed identity on paper can still evolve through changing cask sourcing, batch composition, bottling eras and the inevitable small adjustments of a long-lived official range. Adding Gordon & MacPhail’s 20-year-old Speymalt 2000 offers a different perspective altogether: a longer-aged, independently bottled Macallan, selected and presented beyond the official Sherry Oak framework. Together, they should tell us something about consistency, evolution, and the many ways Macallan’s sherried spirit can be interpreted.
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Two Bowmore 2005 The Whisky Agency
Back in February we were stunned by a few magnificent official Bowmore, so this time I’m turning to two independent bottlings. Rather fittingly, they are sister casks released by the same bottler and retailer, The Whisky Agency: both were distilled in 2005, matured in the same type of cask and bottled in 2026. The question, then, is whether these two Bowmore prove closely aligned in character or reveal meaningful differences between casks.
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4 Springbank 15-year-old and Batch Variation
After our Irish detour, we are back in Scotland, and more specifically in one of the country’s most obsessively followed distilleries: Springbank. This tasting brings together four 15-year-olds – an older bottle from 2006 and the 2024, 2025 and 2026 releases – for a simple but revealing exercise in batch variation, with the aim of seeing how much the same age statement can shift over time while still remaining recognisably Springbank.
That kind of comparison is exactly where Springbank tends to reward attention. Even when the age statement stays fixed, the cask mix, batch composition and bottling conditions can subtly reshape the whisky from one release to the next, so lining up an older bottling against three recent ones should tell us a lot about continuity and drift, and perhaps even about what we really mean when we say a whisky is ‘the same’ from year to year. When the Local Barley has age, cask and farm variation, the Springbank 15-year-old shows stability.
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Redbreast 21-year-old and Cuatro Barriles
After Monday’s detour into old-school Jameson — with the 1980s 12-year-old reminding us of Midleton’s earlier output (and the even older 1940s version still tied to Bow Street) — we stay firmly within the Midleton universe, but shift gears toward one of its most celebrated single pot still brands: Redbreast.
This time, the line-up pairs two very different expressions of the style: the Redbreast Cuatro Barriles, with its cask-driven, modern experimental edge, and the 21-year-old, long considered one of the benchmarks for mature Irish pot still whiskey. Together, they offer a useful contrast between innovation and maturity within the same distillery framework, and a chance to see how far the Redbreast profile can stretch — from active wood influence to the layered complexity that only extended ageing can bring.
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Auchroisk 1975 / Flora & Fauna / Chorlton
Auchroisk is one of those Speyside distilleries that most whisky drinkers know indirectly, because much of its spirit has long gone into blends rather than into a broad official single-malt range. That makes a trio like this especially attractive: a rare 1975 bottling from the old “The Singleton” era, the 10-year-old Flora & Fauna, and a 14-year-old independent bottling from Chorlton Whisky all show different faces of the same distillery across different periods and bottling philosophies.
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3 Old Fettercairn: 80s, 90s & 2008
Fettercairn is one of those Highland distilleries that has quietly built a very distinctive identity without ever becoming noisy about it. This tasting brings together three bottles from very different moments in Fettercairn’s history: a NAS single malt bottled in the 1980s, a 10-year-old bottled in the 1990s, and a 2008 independent bottling from Douglas Laing. On paper, they span three eras of Fettercairn presentation; in the glass, they should offer a useful look at how the distillery’s spirit has been handled, interpreted, and sold across time, even though it lacks expressions from their current core range. More than just a vertical in age or bottling date, this is a small archive of how Fettercairn has been seen by both official and independent bottlers, and of how a once fairly discreet Highland malt can reveal surprising depth when you line up the older releases.
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5 Blair Athol From the 1970s to 2020s
Blair Athol is one of those distilleries that rewards a broad tasting approach because its character has shifted noticeably across eras and bottling styles. Here, five whiskies – two 8-year-olds bottled in the 1970s and late 1980s, the 12-year-old Flora & Fauna, a 2010 independent release from Elixir Distillers’ Single Malts of Scotland range, and a 35-year-old from Signatory Vintage – offer a compact but revealing look at how this Highland malt can move from older official bottlings to a more contemporary cask-selected expression.
What makes this line-up especially interesting is the mix of perspectives it gives on the same distillery. The two older 8-year-olds should show Blair Athol in a more old-school official guise. The Flora & Fauna provides the classic distillery bottling reference point, and the 2010 Elixir Distillers and 1988 Signatory releases bring in the independent bottlers’ interpretation of Blair Athol’s spirit. Taken together, they create a useful comparison of age, era, and bottling philosophy, and a reminder that Blair Athol has long been more than just a quiet component of blends, as we’ve been able to see on these pages already.
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