MEETING FINN THOMSON

Recently we had the pleasure of traveling down to Grandtully to find out more about his family story and try some amazing drams.The Thomson family has an astonishing nine generations of (documented) whisky history, so we were in for a treat. We started our day at Loch of Grandtully, where 300 years ago, John “The Rogue” Thomson sank his illegal pot still to evade the excise men.

From there, we moved to the Grandtully Distillery site, which was taken over by Donald and James Thomson. Sadly, the distillery is no longer there, but we did get to see the beautiful setting and read about the distillery from the First Edition of Barnadard’s Whisky Distilleries, painting a picture of the place and distillation techniques.

We travelled to the Grandtully Hotel to taste a delicious cocktail. Finn found the recipe in his family archives. This 1900s creation featured whisky, plum wine, pineapple and vino de color.

We had a go at rummaging through the archives ourselves. Discovering the merchant life of the Thomson family was a truly fascinating journey through the history of blending, selling, and purchasing casks.Along with the hotel and the bridge built by Finn’s family in the village, we got to see the most unique house, perfectly showing the character of Duncan “The Grand Old Man” Thomson, who met with an architect and placed two bottles of whisky on the table, instructing the man to “fill the space between” the result being the Bandarroch house with two turrets at the front.

We finished our day by paying our respects to James Thomson and visiting St Mary’s church.

James “The Rogue” Thomson marks the very beginning of the whisky history of the Thomson family and was buried near his farm, only a hill over from where he sunk his still.

We did not come back empty handed! 

In fact, we brought back highly collectible single cask bottling from Port Ellen, which features the incredible painted ceiling from St Mary’s church on the label.

Port Ellen 40 Years Old 

Private Cask Collection

This incredible single malt was distilled at Port Ellen Distillery in 1983 and was one of the last casks to be filled prior to the distillery’s closure in 1987. It was aged for 40 years in a single refill sherry butt. It is an exquisitely balanced malt. The sea-breeze smokiness combines with delicate citric undertones and delicate peaches and cream flavours, balancing the peatiness with fruit.  It was bottled without chill-filtration or artificial colouring.  Only 9 bottles were produced.

£5,000.00

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