SRV5 8 Year Old Blended Malt (Thompson Bros.)

The Thompson brothers (Phil and Simon) put family-owned Dornoch Castle Hotel on the map as one of the greatest whisky hotels in Scotland, championing ‘old style’ whiskies made with heritage barley, brewer’s yeast and long fermentations, and going on to set up the tiny Dornoch Distillery in 2016 (with plans for a much larger site now afoot). They’ve also become award-winning independent bottlers for releases such as this.

Really very, very affordable whisky lovingly put together by whisky geeks, for whisky geeks. SRV5 aka 'Station Road Vat 5' is the name of the 1,000 litre European oak vessel where this non-chill filtered, natural colour blended malt (North Highland, Islay and Speyside single malts) rested and slowly integrated over many months. This ‘solera’ vat is never emptied to less than a third, so each batch includes whisky from the previous releases.