I was very pleased to see the news this morning that Old Pulteney 21 year old has been named World Whisky Of The Year in Jim Murray’s 2012 Whisky Bible. The whisky beat 1,200 other drams to take the honours with a score of 97.5 points out of 100.

We first came across Old Pulteney a few years ago when we participated in an online whisky tasting via Twitter (yup, you heard right… whisky tasting with a bunch of people all over the globe via Twitter – it worked surprisingly well!). Old Pulteney is perhaps one of Scotland’s most overlooked distilleries, often losing out in terms of name recognition to the big name brands with their correspondingly large corporate marketing budgets. Certainly, at the time we did the Twitter whisky tasting, we weren’t familiar with Old Pulteney at all, but we went out and dutifully bought a bottle so that we could take part. Well, all I can say is that Old Pulteney blew us away that night, and our whisky shelf hasn’t been without a bottle of it since!

Distilled in Wick, way up in the north of Scotland (Old Pulteney is the most northerly distillery on the Scottish mainland), Old Pulteney has a faintly salty taste as a result of the proximity of the distillery to the sea. This is by no means overbearing, though, and the whisky also has a sweetness and fresh fruitiness to it that is simply sublime. It is well worth a try, and highly recommended by us!