What could be better than your very own whisky?
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When I go on holiday I’m always keen to try the local cuisine and I interact with lots of tourists visiting Inverness who are like-minded.
Behind the bar we are often asked: “Can I try something local that I won’t find back home?” There are many bottles that would fulfil that criteria, depending on where the person was from, of course, but we wanted to take it a little bit further at The Malt Room.
We’ve teamed up with Tomatin Distillery to bottle a unique single cask that will only be available in the bar. It was a really taxing process – Tomatin hand-delivered cask samples to the bar and the team and I sat down and went through them, eventually narrowing it down to two casks. There are not many people out there who would do that, so I would like to thank my team for their laborious work that day.
After doing some blind tasting with some of our regulars, a clear favourite emerged. We have decided to go with a 2006 Tomatin matured in an Amontillado sherry cask. This type of sherry is characterised by nutty aromas, tobacco, aromatic herbs and often ethereal, polished notes of oak. It’s the fusion of two different ageing processes which make Amontillado wines extraordinarily complex and intriguing.
The whisky is being bottled at cask strength, natural colour and non chill filtered.
For us self proclaimed whisky geeks it doesn’t really get much better than choosing your own whisky, designing the label and having a bottle on the shelves that is completely unique to ourselves.
The bottles are due to arrive this week and will be permanently available in the bar. Until, that is, we run out and have to go through the gruelling process once more!
Many thanks to everyone at Tomatin for continuing to support The Malt Room and giving us the opportunity to bottle such a cracking dram.
- Matt MacPherson is the owner and founder of The Malt Room in Inverness.
