ORPHAN BARREL MUCKETY MUCK SERIES

That’s a lot of corn, but the extended time in barrel has given the whisky a welcome roundness. Around 400 pigs lived at Port Dundas, some of which were exceptional in size and so awarded their own prize cards. The mash bill for Entrapment is 97 percent corn and three percent malted barley. It’s actually fairly standard for distilleries to be homes for livestock, since distilling draff makes excellent feed. This expression pays an interesting homage to a lesser known element of Port Dundas’ operation – its piggery. The nose will catch bursts of caramel along with notes of baked sugar, crisp fruit and toasted oak. It’s easier to accomplish this feat when you’re owned by Diageo, the largest spirit conglomerate on the planet. Orphan Barrel is a bottler that acquires lost, forgotten, or unwanted “orphan” barrels of high-end aging whiskey. Muckety-Muck is a Port Dundas single grain whisky, though it has a different name and label. The next year Diageo appealed to the masses by putting a significant marketing campaign behind Haig Club (earlier this year they actually released two canned cocktails made with Haig Club, though not available in the U.S.).

William Grant & Sons released 25 and 30 year-old Girvan expressions in 2013 to appeal to high-end whisky drinkers.

ORPHAN BARREL MUCKETY MUCK SERIES

This cycle of no supply for no demand may be seeing its end as distillers try to get a jump on the single grain market. Muckety-Muck 25-Year-Old is the latest release in the Orphan Barrel series from Diageo, which highlights limited quantities of very old whiskeys heroically rescued from the mouldering corners of various warehouses. These expressions came out with a newer interest in single grain whiskies, which previously have been disregarded as low-quality blending swill. These stores stand to be mixed into future limited release blends, and Diageo released Port Dundas single grain whiskies in 2015. This isn’t goodbye, however, since stores of whisky were at the distillery at the time of close. Port Dundas’ long life ranged from 1811 to 2010, when Diageo closed it not for disrepair or lesser need of grain whisky, but simply to consolidate all grain distillation to Cameronbridge. Although Port Dundas Distillery closed its doors in 2010, there are select, rare remaining. Port Dundas was one such distillery in the late 19th century it actually had the largest output of any Scotch distillery. Grain whiskey distilleries can produce their own labels and expressions, but more often they make grain whisky to supply other distilleries. Single grain whisky can be any number of grains, and any number and variety of maturations. But it’s not! It’s grain whisky produced by a single distillery.

The term “single grain whisky” logically would seem to mean a whisky made of a single grain.

Orphan barrel muckety muck