Millburn Signatory Vintage 1979 [Feather’s Flight Review Set #17]

The Feathers Pub! That’s where I went.

What in the what is Millburn distillery? Well like a lot of the world, they stopped producing quality spirits in the 80s and fell into ruin, leaving us all with a gaping hole in our chests where they used to be.

Well… that was a little melodramatic.

The distillery started in 1807, before the Excise Act of 1823. They have a nebulous period where they both existed and didn’t between 1829 and 1853, when it was bought and turned into a mill.

In 1876 someone realized that corn blows and whisky rocks, and turned it back into a distillery.

A bunch of things happened after that, mostly including what happens with companies that eventually are owned by Diageo: They kept merging with others like some sort of horny bacteria.

It would seem this distillery was used by a variety of blenders to add a certain flavour or help out. I don’t have any proof of that, save a few things I read.

Suffice to say, this is a rare whisky to have as a single malt. The reviews I’ve read on others have been…. negative. And that’s coming from me.

Also this was chosen blind by my wife. She didn’t know anything about it, and hid the name from me to test my utter sad ability to figure stuff out. She chose it because I’ve never had one.

Let’s see if this is a dumpster fire or not, shall we?

Price: N/A

Region: Speyside

Distilled: 31st of March 1979

Bottled: March 1995

Bottle Number: 259 of 308

Cask # 1102

Age: 16

Abv: 60.1%

Colour: 5Y 9/4

Nose: Mango, thyme, caramel/butter, ash, eucalyptus, taro cake

Lots of flavour on the nose. It’s odd. It starts out really fruity, with some herbal and butter/caramel notes.

Then it goes to more herbal, and then the sweetness dies down, but doesn’t leave. If you’ve never had Taro Cake, then you’re racist. I mean, wait. That doesn’t help at all and is dumb to say.

Taro cake is lighter, and doesn’t have big flavours to it. It smells like earth and sweet. And this has that smell.

Taste: Brine, lemon tart, cinnamon, peach, burn

If you were to try this one, you wouldn’t like it. It really does take time to get past the butter, brine, and other odd flavours.

It’s quite sweet. And the burn is only in the background. Doesn’t feel overly strong, and water actually brings more burn for me.

Finish: Cocoa, mango, taro, mint, marzipan, strawberry jam

Nice and sweet. Good amount of earth mixed in. Love marzipan. Medium length finish, but has some complexity I wasn’t expecting with jammy notes.

So basically it’s like one of those Puff cookies. And personally that’s alright with fatty here.

Conclusion: This is quite the roller-coaster ride on this one. It has big flavours, and then unique flavours. It’s earthy, but well refined earth. The taste has lots of brine, and then goes to being baked goods.

And the finish? Basically an amazing cookie that I eat like a crazy person by first taking the chocolate parts off, then the marshmallow, and then licking the jam.

Sorry for your boner/wet panties after imaging that.

From what I’ve read, there’s one other good Millburn. I’ll be looking for it.

84/100

Scotch review #556, Speyside review #169, Whisky Network review #916