Tomatin is the only distillery I have visited but not looked around. With a young family the best I could do was a quick look around the visitor centre shop before jumping back in the car and driving home after a holiday to Aviemore.

Aviemore is a great place to visit as it happens and as Tomatin is still on the list circled as the one which got away, I will need to fabricate a reason to visit the area again to fix this embarrassment I have been living with for the last 6 years.

The good news at least is there is a few Tomatin releases to look over in the blog already from various sources. Tomatin is the link.

The Distillery

The Tomatin distillery sits right on the border between the Highlands and the Speyside region.

As with so many scotch whisky distilleries there is evidence of illegal distillation on the site for centuries. The name Tomatin translates as “Hill of the Juniper Bush”. This is significant because Juniper wood does not produce smoke when it is burned. Something of a requirement if you want to distill spirit outside and not get caught by the excise men.

The legal distillery dates from 1897 and the location had a lot of advantages. From the new railway to the plentiful supply of water. In fact, the only thing that was not plentiful was a skilled workforce close at hand. To solve this problem the distillery was built with enough housing to accommodate the whole workforce so it could be relocated and close at hand. An interesting fact about the distillery today is that 80% of the current payroll still live in site in those original houses.

Tomatin through the 1950’s to 1970’s gained a good reputation with the blenders and increased capacity to an eventual 5 sets of stills to meet demand. They also had their own range of single malts something very unusual at the time. The below video shared from the Tomatin distillery YouTube page is a PR movie made in 1958. It is really interesting to see the whisky production technique from back then and how that compares to some very modern distilleries today.

With the global downturn for blended whisky in the 1980’s the Tomatin distillery was wound down and closed. The size of the operation meant the overheads were too high to sustain when bigh to sustain when blenders did not want to buy any stock. In 1986 the distillery was reopened by  Takara Shuzo who were previously the largest single customer of Tomatin distillery. This marked the first time a scotch whisky distillery would be owned outright by a Japanese company. Something that is very common today for better or worse.

The Whisky

This 12 year old is full term matured in Oloroso Sherry casks bottled at 40% ABV and was released a good few years ago. The current version is a mix of Bourbon and Sherry casks for around £50 and this would have been for similar money back then as well.

Tasting Notes

Colour	russet
Nose	Full bodied leather and sultana’s. This is so immediately obviously sherried
Palate	w
Finish	wonderful long finish. Christmas isn’t too far away now and this would have really fitted

Final Thoughts

The only downside about this bottle is you can’t get it anymore. I will need to think about what to use this December now this bottle is over.