Nose: Amarena cherry, fresh blackberry and cacao. Intense pear drop, boot polish and honey-coated granola with chocolate flakes. Almost no detectable nose prickle – you’d never guess this was nearly 50%.

Palate: Intense and concentrated, but light in body. At first, dark chocolate and sour cherry, sweetening to cherry cola, then cocoa-dusted, roasted almonds. Treacle tart and a little espresso. This gives way to some sweet cereal notes, like puffed rice and wheat flakes. Only the merest tingle of alcohol – it’s silky smooth.

Finish: Medium-short. Intense cocoa and somewhat creamy – like a very intense chocolate milkshake.

Comments: Distilled in 1968 and matured for 53 years in a single European oak sherry butt. Filling grain spirit into sherry wood may seem extravagant to us today, but over half a century ago there were far more ex-sherry casks in use for whisky maturation than is now the case and the cask in question would probably have had a previous filling of whisky.

Nose: Delicately perfumed. Desiccated coconut, then the fragrance of gentian liqueur (like Suze), jasmine, dandelion and burdock. Peppermint oil and menthol bring some weight, with mandarin zest notes. Bass notes of dried lime and pencil shavings.

Palate: Light. Pear drop at first. Creamy butter icing, coconut oil, and vanilla essence are joined by delicate lemon zest. Subtle bitterness and delicate tea tannins balance icing sugar sweetness. A little frosted corn flake.

Finish: Medium. The frosted corn flake gives way to green apple core.

Comments: On 8th January 1964, the initial distillations of new make spirit were filled to cask at Girvan grain distillery, and this bottling comes from the earliest cask to be filled. Girvan Technical Lead John Ross recalls that “Charles Gordon’s real passion was spirit quality and each year we would have a quarterly review about the development of our spirit quality. It was never about the status quo with Charles but simply how we would improve the quality through innovation. That said much about him.”

Nose: Grapefruit zest, mosaic hop, capaicum and five spice (particularly clove and anise). Underneath, there’s brown sugar, sticky caramels, and some milk chocolate. Real honeycomb and fresh figs, too. Some pine needles, cypress wood and juniper, too.

Palate: Medium. Intense and almost fizzy, with safflower and cranberry. Sour red apple notes sweeten with time on the palate. Fresh juniper berry, orange zest oils, and mosto cotto sweeten to bittersweet burnt caramel.

Finish: Medium, on caramel sweetness. The pine note lingers retronasally.

Comments: Back in the 1960s, it was not uncommon for distillers to fill a blend of new make malt and new make grain spirit directly to cask, in the interests of efficiency. In the case of William Grant & Sons Ltd, such a blend would usually be sold in the USA at three or six years of age. This bottling contains a number of grains and malts, the identities of which have been lost in the mists of time.

Nose: Intense over-ripe pineapple, dried mango, cocoa, and malted milk. Cinder toffee, too. Dunnage aromas, pot pourri (rose petals, particularly) and ripe passionfruit. Delicate leather and cedarwood, with unlit cigar and charred stave.

Palate: Intense and cordial-like at first, with sourness of under-ripe blackberry balanced by brown sugar. Then comes lime leaf, candied lemon, gooseberry jam, and cocoa-dusted pecans. Some maple syrup and crispy candied bacon, Mellows on the palate to charcoal, milk chocolate and malted milk.

Finish: Medium-short, on malted milk.

Comments: Distilled in the mid-1960s and blended three years later, this blend has matured in two American oak hogsheads for well over half a century. Bottled as a single cask release, this is described by House of Hazelwood as “One of the rarest whiskies within our inventory.”

Nose: Sweet and sour notes of prunes in syrup, dried figs, baked red apples, raisins, lemon juice and Vinagre de Jerez. Cinnamon stick, clove, muscovado sugar, and plum liqueur. Kirsch and toffee sauce. Pine sap, cedar and leather. Stewed strawberries and blackberries, then liquorice stick.

Palate: Full. Core notes of toffee apple are joined by bitter espresso, then quickly into liquorice, and zesty marmalade made with grapefruit, orange and lemon peels. With time on the palate it sweetens considerably, with the core notes becoming predominant. Retronasal aromas of cedar, verging into subtle oud. Then prune and roasted almond.

Finish: Medium-long, the nuttiness fades and leaves fresh blackberry.

Comments: A blend of ‘the best of the best,’ top malt whiskies from the inventory that are highly prized by blenders and used very sparingly over time. Aged in casks seasoned with oloroso sherry.

Nose: Old, polished oak furniture and ‘bibliochor’ (the smell of old books). This is a mix of vanilla pod, old leather, and blanched almond. Manuka honey, heather and very ripe red apple. Some candle wax and shortcrust pastry. Milk tea with tapioca pearls with brown sugar.

Palate: Medium. A medley of dried bananas and red apples, with over-ripened strawberry, blackberry coulis, dark chocolate, mixed nuts (roasted almond, peanut), and medjool dates. There’s sultana sweetness, and very subtle retronasal aromas of mint leaf, rose and lavender.

Finish: Medium-long. On dates, peanut and red apple. Simply superb.

Comments: A blend created in 1994 to mark the 500th anniversary of the earliest recorded reference to Scotch whisky in the 1494 Exchequer Rolls of Scotland. At the time, 500 bottles of this 18-year-old blend of Girvan grain and Speyside malts were produced, but the rest remained in the cask for another 28 years.

Nose: Milk cookie, coconut flakes, Marshmallow Fluff, and pear drop. Ripe mango and citra hops. A mixture of fruit sherbets: raspberry, lemon, lime and orange. Somewhat chalky. Subtle pine needle, menthol and tea tree oil.

Palate: Immensely creamy, with tart citrus — like a lemon-lime-flavoured milkshake. The zing of lemon sherbet and pineapple. Sweet maltiness, like Horlicks, and frosted rice puff cereal. Almond sponge with lemon syrup and vanilla icing. Then some cherry bakewell notes (icing, glace cherry, almond sponge), shifting into mixed boiled sweets: apple, lemon, and rhubarb and custard.

Finish: Long, on malted milk and lemon boiled sweet.

Comments: Distilled in the early 1980s, this blended malt was created from the contents of four hogsheads, and the identities of the malts in question remain undisclosed. Notable for its unusual ‘Refresher’ fruit candy notes.

Nose: A fragrant blend of tropical fruits (especially ripe papaya and pineapple), vanilla pod, whipped buttercream, and mandarin segments. Sawn oak and subtle pine needles bring some resinous and woody notes, but the heady citrus of dried lemon keeps things quite fresh.

Palate: Medium. Immensely sweet and creamy, like eating Chantilly cream, with lemon boiled sweet, a touch of Bisongrass and baked red apples. With time on the palate, icing sugar and fresh green apple emerges, alongside very subtle fennel.

Finish: Medium-long. Fades on vanilla, apple skin and fennel.

Comments: An extremely rare blend of grain whiskies from two now-silent distilleries, aged in extended – or ‘enlarged’ – casks. At the time of distillation, most bourbon barrels were imported to Scotland as ‘shooks’ (batches of staves). Master cooper Ian MacDonald explains that, “Enlargers are barrels expanded by adding additional approximately 8-10 staves to make them into ‘dump hogsheads’. New ends are fitted along with new hoops.”