Talisker 1994 Managers' Choice

For a long time, Talisker was the sole distillery on Scotland’s iconic Isle of Skye. Renowned for the quality of its output, the distillery has rarely changed hands, joining DCL (now Diageo) back in 1916. Despite this, releases were not the most common. An 8 year old was bottled officially and Gordon & MacPhail produced what are now classic and sought after vintage bottlings under official license from the distillery. When a 10 year old expression became a founding pillar of United Distillers’ Classic Malts range in 1988, the popularity of the distillery exploded, and it is now one of the most revered and exported in Scotland.

Back in February 2009, a selection of Diageo distillery managers were tasked to choose a single cask of whisky from each of the 27 malt whisky distilleries in the company's portfolio at the time. The Managers' Choice releases were quite controversial when initially released, being fairly young whiskies with quite high price tags. Official single cask releases from these distilleries are still rare however (as are official release at all in some cases), so perhaps these would be considered quite reasonable now.

Distilled in 1994 and bottled in 2009 from single cask #7147.