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Gordon & MacPhail‘s last Talisker is in our tasting glass. It’s a 39-year-old single cask from 1987. More importantly, it is a handsome bastard.
Old whisky carries a particular anxiety. Age is a tricky old thing, isn’t it, dear reader? Casks care little for reverence or retail pricing.
What if it’s rubbish? What if you left your spirit in a vessel for so long it emerges tasting like antique furniture dissolved in tea? And who is going to tell you? It’s certainly a very awkward conversation to have at a swanky launch party.
Fortunately for this whisky writer, most of my experience with old and rare whisky comes from Gordon & MacPhail, who are pretty darn good at the old maturation game.
This is Gordon & MacPhail’s last Talisker bottling
Gordon & MacPhail’s last Talisker whisky
Right, the details. Only 451 bottles of Talisker Distillery 1987 39 Year Old are available worldwide, each with an RRP of £1,250. The whisky was distilled on 3 March 1987, filled into a refill sherry butt selected by Gordon & MacPhail and left there until 30 April 2026. It was then bottled at its cask strength of 51.4% ABV. The strength alone tells how you well looked after this is. That’s high for 39.
The release joins the independent bottler’s Connoisseurs Choice Heritage range and marks the last time the Talisker name will appear on a Gordon & MacPhail label. Yes, it’s part of the long goodbye as whisky’s most responsible babysitter moves towards only holding stock from its own distilleries. Once it has dispensed with everything still sitting in its warehouse. Which will take about 86 years and raise roughly £12 million, million, billion.
It has bottled some pretty extraordinary Taliskers over the decades, including much-coveted releases distilled during the 1950s. There’s probably a fair amount still sat in a display case somewhere. You can’t drink it when you’re dead, folks.
The father of single malt
The G&M relationship with the Skye distillery forms part of a much bigger contribution to single malt Scotch whisky, made long before distillery bottlings filled every supermarket shelf and airport departure lounge.
George Urquhart, a second-generation member of the family behind Gordon & MacPhail, launched Connoisseurs Choice in 1968. His idea was to bottle and promote single malts from distilleries whose whisky was generally destined for blends.
The Connoisseurs Choice range has included more than 2,000 bottlings from almost 100 Scottish distilleries. Whisky writer Charles MacLean calls Urquhart “the father of single malt”.
For this Heritage release, Gordon & MacPhail has revived the black label used on early Connoisseurs Choice bottlings. It is a smart bit of presentation, and beyond nostalgia connects this final Talisker to the period when independent bottlers played a vital role in introducing drinkers to distilleries as individual entities.
The end of an era
Whisky critic Serge Valentin, who called Gordon & MacPhail’s last Talisker “yet another marvel”, was particularly pleased to see the old design return. He also praised the decision to bottle the whisky at 39 years old instead of leaving it a few more months for the marketable roundness of a 40-year age statement.
Quite right. The whisky was ready. A calendar has never a master blender made.
“This release marks a poignant moment for us,” says Stuart Urquhart, operations director at Gordon & MacPhail. “Thirty-nine years in a refill sherry butt has given this whisky exceptional depth without ever losing Talisker’s signature character.”
That’s the name of the game. Gordon & MacPhail has closed a long chapter in its history with Talisker, and the liquid is good enough to carry the weight of the occasion. It’s waxy, greasy, concentrated, sweet, smoky, herbal, mineral, with swirls of smoke, ripe fruit and restrained sherry moving around one another continously.
I want another. At £1,250 a bottle, I won’t get one. Few will. Still, handsome bastard all the same.
Talisker Distillery 1987 39 Year Old Tasting Note:
Nose: I just sat with this for an age and got exactly what you expect. Acres of aromas. First raspberry tart, curry leaves, pineapple cubes, orange, walnut, dried fruit, bonfire wood, and leather. Then farmyard funk, heather, fish sauce, lilac, sea salt, black pepper, and dark chocolate.
Palate: The weight of that ABV pulses through than an oily spirit that clings to your tongue while breathing woodsmoke over it. Then comes browning apples, tropical juice, and more oranges. There’s also scallops and smoked meat, and the gentle astringency of high-cocoa dark chocolate. Then eucalyptus oils and hessian.
Finish: Glows for an age with so much orange sherbet and a kind of stony ash. Like embers from a very old fireplace.
Our stock of this whisky sold out, but there’s some very fine G&M and a lovely Talisker included in this article if your appetite is suitably whetted.
