Old Pulteney 18 Year (700 ml)

In 1930, Wick voted itself dry under the Temperance (Scotland) Act — the only Scottish town to shutter its distillery by local prohibition rather than commercial failure. Pulteney sat silent for 21 years, reopening in 1951 with the same eccentric copper geometry intact. That geometry matters: the wash still's swan neck was cut short to fit the still-house ceiling, and its oversized boil ball forces heavy, oily spirit back into the copper before condensing through traditional external worm-tub condensers — a configuration shared by fewer than a dozen Scottish distilleries — producing a new make of unusual weight and texture for the Highland region.

The distillery sits on coastal lowland in Wick, Caithness, with five warehouses — three dunnage with clay floors — lying approximately 300 metres from the North Sea. High humidity and persistent sea air penetrate the casks year-round, drawing brine and iodine-edged salinity into the spirit during maturation. Water comes from Loch Hempriggs via a lade engineered by Thomas Telford in 1807. The 18 Year follows a two-stage cask regime: second-fill ex-Bourbon American oak for primary maturation, then a finish in first-fill Spanish oak ex-Oloroso Sherry butts, bottled at 46% ABV. That Oloroso layer — arriving late over an already oily, saline base — deposits dried fruit and dark spice without erasing the coastal edge that defines the house character. The dual-wood finish on a worm-tub distillate is the structural anomaly here: most worm-tub whiskies are left in single-cask regimes to preserve their sulphur-touched weight; Old Pulteney uses the Sherry finish to redirect rather than mask it.