SCOTCH WHISKY: 21ST CENTURY HISTORY AND REGIONS
At the beginning of the millennium, scotch whisky was very important, but was creating far more excitement than blended scotch whiskies, with longer-aged malts making a particular effect.
The number of distilleries of scotch whisky opening or reopening continued to increase. On Islay, for example, Bruichladdich reopened in 2001, having been closed since 1994, while Kilchoman was a new distillery of scotch whisky established from farm buildings in 2005.
The world’s oldest scotch whisky (at that time) appeared in 2010, a Mortlach 70-year-old bottled by Gordon & MacPhail priced at £10,000 a bottle. In 2015, the same company sold a 75 year-old Mortlach for £20,000 a bottle of scotch whisky.
Rather than selling one bottle at a time, The Paterson Collection was released as a lot of 12 bottles of scotch whisky, including some of the oldest and rarest scotch whiskies from 1926 to the 1990s.
Scotland is divided into 4 scotch whisky regions:
the Highlands - which includes Speyside
Lowlands
Islay
Campbeltown
Typical regional characteristics offer a sense of what to expect, but they’re hardly definitive: for example, elegance and complexity of scotch whiskies are attributed to the Highlands, and particularly Speyside, but also the plenty of scotch whiskies.
Islay is famous for intensely peated whiskies, but its eight distilleries also include unpeated scotch whiskies, and scotch whisky that ranges from minimum to maximum peating levels.
Each distillery determines its own house style, whether elegat or full bodied, unpeated or peated, regardless of geography. And with so many distilleries exploring and experimenting, their house styles are including ever more nuances.
Source: The Whisky Dictionary: an A-Z of Whisky, from history & heritage to-distilling & drinking
