All of the whiskies below will be available to purchase at Whisky Show 2025.
The Whisky Show Bottlings
Every year, we select a range of excellent whiskies from around the world to bottle specially for Whisky Show. This year we have whiskies from Scotland, Ireland, Japan and Korea.
For 2025, we have worked with distillers and independent bottlers to find interesting casks in their warehouses and bottle them for the show. This year sees a series of firsts for the show with our first Korean single cask and the first whisky chosen by someone outside the buying team.
As ever, these seven limited-edition releases will be available to buy at the onsite shop at Whisky Show.
The people behind the whiskies will be on their stands at the show, so if you want to learn more, make sure to stop by to have a chat and get your bottle signed for a memento that will last after the whisky has gone.
Distillery Bottlings
Glen Scotia 2014 10 Year Old – Heavily Peated Single First-fill Bourbon Barrel #1961
Campbeltown stalwart Glen Scotia has been around since 1832, surviving downturns and crashes of the whisky market, and remains a whisky fan favourite. Its style is somewhat idiosyncratic, swerving between the sweet and fruity, and rich and oily. While we often see some peatiness in the distillery’s releases, it’s rare to see a full-on smoky dram – Glen Scotia only runs smoky spirit for about 4-6 weeks a year, and it is usually only released unadulterated in the distillery’s own special editions. We asked the team if we could have one for our Whisky Show bottling, and they said yes.
It’s a single first-fill ex-bourbon barrel (cask #1961) of whisky distilled in 2014 from barley peated to somewhere around 50ppm. It was bottled this year at 10 years old, giving us just 226 bottles of floral, fruity and smoky Campbeltown whisky.
Producer’s notes:
Smouldering bonfire and sweet barbecue smoke intermingle with cooked apples and indulgent vanilla. Delicate floral aromas of jasmine and white blossom are balanced with sticky liquorice and warming oak spices.
Tasting notes:
Nose: Soft, grassy smoke with rich earth, slapped mint, green leaves, hints of high cocoa milk chocolate, damp wax jackets and wool, smouldering wood, and dry and smoky peat.
Palate: Well-integrated smoke gives a base for herbal and chocolatey notes. Hints of black liquorice and mint combine with fruity dark chocolate and a rich, mossy earthiness.
Finish: Leafy peat smoke, cocoa, damp earth and wet bark.
Tormore 2009 Legacy Series – Single First-fill Bourbon Barrel #4046
Tormore started distilling in 1960 and has been quietly producing whisky ever since without interruption and with few official bottlings. However, new owners Elixir Distillers are starting to shake things up, releasing first the Blueprint range of whiskies to showcase Tormore’s future character, and now the Legacy range, diving into the distillery's warehouses to show where it has come from.
While most of the casks in the Legacy series are being split up and sold around the world, Tormore 2009 Legacy Series Cask #4046 is a single cask bottled exclusively for Whisky Show 2025.
The whisky was aged for about 15 years in a single first-fill bourbon cask, creating a style of whisky that Elixir Distillers head blender Oliver Chilton calls ‘the heart of Tormore’.
Tasting notes:
Nose: Creamy stewed apples, crunchy pears and hints of pine to start. Mint fondant notes build along with green grass and spiced biscuits. The biscuity notes build into spiced sponge cake with white chocolate icing.
Palate: Sweet cream and freshly cut apples lead to apple sauce and royal icing. Sultanas, spice and white-wine-poached pears develop, along with touches of grain and green leaves.
Finish: Zingy apples and white pepper spice with lingering custard-tinged cream.
Boann 2021 4 Year Old – Single Oloroso Hogshead #21001
Irish whiskey’s long history has only started to be more thoroughly studied relatively recently, with academics like Dr Fionnán O’Connor digging into the archives to uncover the social history of the drink as well as the recipes and techniques once used to make it. This has led to a few distilleries creating spirits that step away from the modern takes on Irish whiskey, looking to the past and the rich and flavoursome spirits produced before the formalisation of the current regulations.
Boann have been leading that charge, with Dr O’Connor on board as an adviser to help them create the spirits of the past. This release from Boann is part of that programme, made to a very old-fashioned mash, dating back to at least 1892 and similar to the most popular through the 1800s, listed as number 5 of their experimental mash bills.
It is made using a recipe of 30% malted barley, 40% unmalted barley and 30% oats. The resulting wash was triple distilled and then matured for 4.5 years in a 250-litre oloroso hogshead from the Montilla-Moriles region of southern Spain.
In a first for us, we have let someone outside of the buying team select this cask, and we are delighted by Dave Broom's choice.
Tasting notes:
Nose: White chocolate and unripe strawberries lead into a rich mix of sultanas, raisins, spiced sponge cake with a rich vein of dark brown sugar and cinnamon-spiced baked apples. Creaminess builds, supported by caramel and toffee-filled chocolates – posh Rolos.
Palate: Rich and oily with orchard fruit and toffee run through with baking spice and brown sugar. Hints of char and anise hide at the back, covered by milk chocolate and chocolate raisins.
Finish: Juicy sultanas and intense, shrivelled raisins with lingering toffee sauce and nutmeg spiciness.
To dive more into the history of Irish whiskey, come along to stand 28 to meet Peter Cooney and Andy Mooney from the distillery, as well as (when he’s not being dragged into talks and tastings) Dr Fionnán O’Connor. You can also meet O’Connor and Dave Broom in their Créatúr: The rise, fall and rise of single pot still whiskey masterclass.
Ki One 2021 – Korean Malt Single New American Oak Cask #21-0200
The Three Societies distillery, just outside Seoul, is Korea’s first whisky distillery. Founder Bryan Do attended his first Whisky Show last year, bringing with him the distillery’s first European release. Since then, its ongoing range – named Eagle, Tiger and Unicorn after the national animals of the three societies of the distillery’s name: the USA, Korea and Scotland – has landed, and we are very pleased to now have an exclusive release for Whisky Show. This is the first single cask release from Ki One with a partner.
It’s made using rare Korean-grown and -malted barley – they don’t grow much barley in Korea and any malt usually goes to make bread and beer. 70% of the malt was produced by the country’s only maltster, but the other 30% was grown locally and malted at the distillery itself. The team used their gin still to steep the barley in water and the still room floor to germinate the barley, before drying it using borrowed drying machines usually used for red peppers.
The resulting spirit was matured for four years in a new American oak cask before being bottled at a punchy 57.1% ABV.
Tasting notes:
Nose: Herbal spiciness to start: bouquet garni, turmeric, fenugreek and piney oak. Brown sugar, maple, fruit leather, candied peel and spiced dark chocolate – dried orange zest and mace – follow.
Palate: The dry spice from the nose kicks off, with black pepper and raisins joining the turmeric. Cinnamon heat and more concentrated fruit build, all on top of a rich melange of stewed apples, pears and sultanas. Darker date and liquorice notes hide at the back.
Finish: Dates and raisins fade to leave creamy oak and soft spice, with just-ripe pear notes lingering.
If you’d like to learn more about the distillery, and the interesting way he came to be a distiller, founder Bryan Do will be around all weekend on stand 123.
Independent Bottlings
Kanosuke 2019 – Single ex-Bourbon Quarter Cask – Bottled by The Heart Cut
The Heart Cut has achieved a lot in a very short amount of time. Since the company’s founding in 2023, it’s picked up World Best Independent Bottler awards at the Icons of Whisky in both 2024 and 2025. Even more impressive is that it’s a two-person team – husband and wife Fabrizio Leoni and Georgie Bell, industry veterans and, within a week of the founding of The Heart Cut, parents of twins…
For this bottling, they’ve joined up with southern Japan’s Kanosuke, one of the top distillers in Japan’s new wave. Founded in 2017 by Yoshitsugu Komasa of the Komasa distilling family, the distillery is named after his grandfather, who dreamed of opening a whisky distillery near the family’s Hioki shochu distillery, but couldn’t get the license needed. Decades later, Yoshitsugu travelled the world learning to make whisky, before returning home and founding Kanosuke.
While The Heart Cut is known for exploring casks and spirits not often found elsewhere, this bottling takes a very different approach: it is a single ex-bourbon quarter cask of Kanosuke’s fruity unpeated spirit. There are just 148 bottles of the 55% spirit available, and we don’t expect them to last long.
Nose: Big, ripe fruit up front, lots of sun-warmed apricots, giving way to honeycomb with a delicate and fragrant herbal quality.
Palate: More of the stone fruit with apricots joined by deliciously ripe peaches, that honeycomb evolves into a toasty, bittersweet caramel note like the sweet char of a toasted marshmallow. That itself develops into the slightly bitter quality of a fine black tea.
Finish: The juiciness of the stone fruit pushes on with the whisper of lemon verbena carrying it.
If you want to learn more about The Heart Cut or Kanosuke, Georgie or Fabrizio will be around throughout the show on stand 316, and Komasa-san will be on stand 46.
Benriach 2012 13 Year Old – Single PX Sherry Sherry Cask #38 – Bottled by Adelphi
Adelphi is one of the most respected bottlers in the industry, with managing director Alex Bruce tracing his whisky heritage back to Andrew Usher, his 4-times great-grandfather, often considered the father of blended whisky. Adelphi’s single casks are now available all around the world, making them increasingly hard to find, with most retailers only getting a handful of bottles that sell out quickly. For us to get a whole single cask from the company’s warehouses all to ourselves is a rare treat.
Benriach is a big favourite of whisky connoisseurs, with its rebirth at the hands of industry legend Billy Walker in 2004 and its continuation into the present day under the watchful eye of blender Rachel Barrie cementing its place in the whisky firmament.
This special bottling for Whisky Show 2025 was distilled in 2012, matured for 13 years in first-fill PX sherry cask #38 and bottled at 58.6%.
Nose: On the nose, the first-fill pedro ximenez sherry hogshead delivers the richness you expect with layers of Christmas cake fruit and spice with bitter chocolate leading into toasted hazelnuts.
Palate: Plenty of that rich sherry cask profile, with more of the fruitcake sweetness up front. That is followed by delicious dried figs and caramel given a mature edge with walnuts and cocoa nibs.
Finish: The PX profile carries over with the dried fruit giving way to cocoa and ending on a lingering praline nuttiness.
If you want to learn more about Adelphi and its distillery, Ardnamurchan, you’ll find Alex Bruce on stand 16.
Benrinnes 1992 33 Year Old – Single Refill Hogshead #8884 – Bottled by Rare Find
Gleann Mor is a bottler with an impressive selection of casks hidden in its warehouses. Its Rare Find range explores older whiskies that are seldom seen bottled by independents or even the distillers themselves. We were very pleased to work with them earlier this year for the first time to bottle a 26-year-old Glen Elgin (now very much sold out), and are pleased to continue the collaboration with this venerable Benrinnes.
Benrinnes is well-known to fans of rich and oily whisky, with a wide heart cut and worm tubs giving it a weighty character. While it is popular with independent bottlers, you rarely see it at this age, and it’s been years since we’ve seen another 1992 vintage or even a bottling in its 30s appear on the market. The extra years in the cask allow the spirit the mellow and change, giving it extra layers of complexity, showing why bottlings such as this are so sought after.
Tasting notes:
Nose: Warming apple pie and custard, with unnecessary but pleasant whipped cream, a dusting of baking spice and some freshly sliced green apple for balance. White-flower and barley-sugar notes develop along with orange fondant, white chocolate and hints of stewed rhubarb. With time, things settle to a softly spicy and forest-fruity mix.
Palate: Stewed apples and pears with a sprinkle of icing sugar and a sprig of mint lead into a creamy core, with milky latte, caramel sauce of freshly ground nutmeg. Apple-skin sourness and polished oak give balance and hints of age, with beeswax polish and green leaves bringing up the rear.
Finish: Orchard fruit, leaves and polished wood fade to leave cream and a hint of herbal mintiness.
To learn more about Gleann Mor and maybe tease out of them what’s coming next, you’ll be able to find sales head John Moffat and whisky specialist Matt McKay on stand 126.