Queen of the Moorlands Single Malt Whisky

 It'll soon be Christmas. We're getting all our seasonal stock in at the shop, in preparation for the mad rush. There's everything from mulled wine spice packs to radios with the insides taken out and replaced with vodka shots, gardening sets accompanied by bottled beer, and, as you can imagine, millions of different whiskies from all over Scotland. It's a whisky anorak's paradise.

Our first Christmas at The Wine Shop was in 2003. We were overwhelmed by just how many of our customers wanted a good recommend for an easy drinking, not too peaty, very suitable as a gift and well under £30, bottle of whisky. This gave us the idea of finding our own dram to bottle and to put our name to...a house whisky if you like and in May 2004, we launched it, The Queen of the Moorlands 12 year old Speyside Single Malt. 

The whisky is distilled at one of only two, family owned distilleries in Speyside, Scotland. Leek is known by locals as "The Queen of the Moorlands" and we thought that it would be fitting to use the name on the label. We thought, that if we were lucky and wealthy enough to own a distillery somewhere up in the hills above Leek, then this is kind of how we would like it to taste. It has a deep red colour, and a hint of toffee, marmalade and sherry on the nose. On the palate there is more of the sherry and the smallest hint of peat on the long sweet finish. Ever since May 2004, the Queen of the Moorlands Speyside Single Malt has been our biggest selling dram by miles.

After a while, and as the shop started to attract more and more serious whisky enthusiasts, we began to be asked to provide Single Cask Single Malts under our own label. I managed to get a few samples in, and these were passed among customers for their approval. I thought it would be a good idea to involve them in the buying decision, after all, they would be the people buying and drinking it. From then on, where ever possible, a few of us would meet up in The Earl Grey Inn in Leek, to vote upon what whiskies would become our future Single Cask bottlings. These Single Cask Whiskies were always very limited. Often each edition would consist of only a hundred or so bottles. We therefore decided to individually number each one. These whiskies became know as The Queen of the Moorlands Rare Cask bottlings. Always bottled at natural cask strength, never with any artificial colouring. The first whisky in this range was a stunning Strathisla 1969 that was nearly black in colour, and really incredibly heavily sherried...an absolute stunner and we were amazed how quickly it sold, particularly as it carried quite a weighty price tag.

As we had began to visit Islay a lot more, we became a little biased towards it's whiskies. We started to receive more and more samples from the island and whenever we got hold of a really peaty offering, we passed it onto our local blacksmith, Gordon Richards who is a fan of whisky, really smoky ones too.

Gordon was given the task of selecting, from a range of samples, some sherry matured Bowmore 1991. Once he had made his selection and we had bottled the whisky, and named it "The Blacksmith's Bottling", we sent some samples off for review firstly by Whisky Magazine, and then by Jim Murray in his Whisky Bible 2008.

Whisky Magazine promptly gave us a Bronze award in the Independent Bottlers Challenge. Jim Murray gave us a massive score of 96, to this day, no other bottler including Bowmore themselves, have not scored higher...so pretty good then...well done Gordy!

From then on, we have been lucky enough to get our hands on some fabulous whiskies, look carefully in this pic and you'll see that we even managed to bottle some Port Ellen, don't get excited though, we sold it all in a week. We've also bottled Laphroaig, Bruichladdich, Bunnahabhain (twice), Caol Ila (5 times), Clynelish, Longmorn (95 in the Whisky Bible), Teaninich, Springbank, Mortlach (twice), Tullibardine (twice), Glenglassaugh, Glenlivet, Glentauchers, Glen Grant, Glenrothes, and not forgetting a very special dram that we managed to get our hands on that was selected by some friends of ours from a distillery that we cannot name....but to give you a clue, it's one of the Islay kildalton distilleries.

"OurBeg" then was chosen by Bob and Bonnie, of Arlington, Virginia, friends that we'd met in a hotel in Campbeltown whilst visiting Springbank. Bob, it turned out, is a big fan of the produce of the distillery we cannot name, and so, when he and Bonnie who visited us in Leek, we arranged a night out (and a night I'm sure they will never, ever forget) in the Earl Grey Inn in Leek. We presented them with three cask samples from the distillery we cannot name, and we let them decide what would end up in the bottle...and what a cracking dram they chose. All 200 or so bottles of OurBeg sold within a week.

So, if you are looking for a bottle of whisky that is of extremely high quality, that has huge complexity whilst having been bottled without any tampering whatsoever, and that has been selected by the end user...look no further than the Queen of the Moorlands Whiskies...and further more...if you don't believe me, call into the shop and we'll give you a few drams and you can decided for yourself.

Our current bottlings are...

The Queen of the Moorlands 12 year old Speyside Single Malt 40%abv

Queen of the Moorlands Rare Cask Allt a Bhainne (Speyside) 1996 53.7% (201 bottles only)

Queen of the Moorlands Rare Cask Caol Ila The Blacksmith's Bottling (Islay) 1995 51.6%

Queen of the Moorlands Rare Cask Laphroaig Feis Ile Bottling (Islay) 1996 51.1%

Oh...

We also have our own Queen of the Moorlands Orange Whisky Liqueur...yum yum.

Slainte

David