Some whiskies you can simply go out and buy. Others required you to be standing in a particular room on a particular evening. Douglas Laing turned 70 in 2018, and for the celebration a single sherry butt was emptied. Seventy bottles. Every one of them signed by hand.
The Expert's Description
Douglas Laing 70th Anniversary 20 Years Old is a Single Speyside Malt Scotch Whisky matured in a single Sherry Butt and bottled at 52%. It was created for the importers and staff who attended the company’s 70th anniversary celebration, never reached a retail shelf, and that alone explains a great deal about how few exist.
The Speyside distillery behind the whisky is undisclosed. That is standard practice when Douglas Laing bottles single casks sourced from distilleries that will not lend their name, and it is why the label reads Single Speyside Malt rather than a distillery name. The style, however, is unmistakable. Twenty years in Spanish sherry oak has pushed dark fruit and depth into the spirit without flattening Speyside's brighter malt sweetness. The cask yielded 70 bottles, hand filled and numbered, each label carrying the signatures of both Fred and Cara Laing.
Douglas Laing has been bottling whisky since 1948 and the firm remains in the family's hands. The 70th Anniversary was their own birthday present to themselves, and one of the rarest pieces of whisky history the family has ever released.
Tasting Notes
Nose
Dark ripe fruit leads: prunes, figs and long-steeped raisins. Behind that sit honey, orange peel and a dry nuttiness from the sherry oak. Give the glass fifteen minutes and vanilla arrives, along with a whisper of old leather.
Palate
Full and close to oily. Caramel and baked apple meet cinnamon and a touch of clove, with oak tannin keeping the sweetness on a short leash. The 52% reads as warmth rather than heat. A few drops of water do not break it apart, they round it out.
Finish
Long and dry. Dark chocolate, pipe tobacco and a nutty bitterness that hangs around well after the last sip. Right at the end the honey comes back.
Specifications
Name: Douglas Laing 70th Anniversary 20 Years Old Single Speyside Malt Scotch Whisky 52%
Bottler: Douglas Laing
Region/Country: Speyside, Scotland
Type: Single Speyside Malt Scotch Whisky
Age: 20 years
ABV: 52%
Size: 70 CL
Cask type: Sherry Butt
Bottled: 2018
Number of bottles: 70
Edition: 70th Anniversary
Flavour Profile
Sherry Matured · Fruity · Spiced · Nutty · Full Bodied · Oaky
Investment Potential
High. One cask, 70 bottles, never released for general sale and signed by the family behind the firm. That combination makes the bottle genuinely hard to track down, and it has climbed considerably in value since 2018.
Did You Know?
Douglas Laing was founded in 1948 by Fred Douglas Laing. That year Scotch was still rationed after the war, and most of the whisky bottled in Scotland was shipped abroad to earn foreign currency for the British Treasury. The firm was born into a market where whisky was treated almost as a trading commodity, on a par with coal.
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