Old whisky bottle (Full!!)

[MHeard]

Hello to all.

An admission first, I am not a whisky drinker however I have some in my possession that I am interested in as it's fairly old. It was given to my grandfather as a gift while he was a GP by one of his patients and never opened, which dates it as pre-1960s at least! It is a wicker covered oval shaped bottle with a sealed cork in the top. It has a paper tag tied about the neck which reads:-
"V.O.H Special Blend Scotch Whisky 70' proof Selected by Harrods LTD London sw1"
If anyone can shed any light on this bottle and its contents I would be very grateful!
Regards
Mike

[John Barleycorn]

Hi Mike and welcome to the forum.

I was just about to reply that it would be difficult to know what is in this bottle unless you know who the blender is, when I came across a small reference to Harrods Ltd in The Schweppes Guide to Scotch. It states that most of Harrods blended whiskies were produced by Whyte & MacKay Ltd; it then proceeds to list the whiskies available from Harrods at that time, of which Harrods VOH Special Blend is one of them. The only conclusion that can be drawn from this is that there is a very strong probability that the contents of this bottle is a Whyte & MacKay product

VOH is just an abbreviation for 'Very Old Highland'. A kind of age statement of that time and not very useful, together with the region the whisky comes from.

Hope this is of some help.

Cheers John

[MHeard]

Thank you very much John, that's most interesting. I suppose what I'm also wondering is if it still has a chance of being drinkable!

[John Barleycorn]

I see no reason why you should not. You say it is sealed, so therefore the contents should by ok. There may be a small loss in volume due to evaporation over the years but that shouldn't make any noticeable difference.

Let us know your thoughts


Cheers John