Blair Athol is one of those distilleries where I hear the name and think "Sure! Blair Athol! I've had a million of those!" and then I check my archive and I've had two. Just two.
Maybe I've had a few drams at SMWS tastings or at the bar at Jack Rose here in DC and just forgot to blog them; maybe I just see the name on other blogs, I'm not really sure. But I picked this bottle from Blackadder because I trust Blackadder and I _thought_ I was familiar with Blair Athol.
I don't think I've ever had a bad or even average Blair Athol - everything I've sampled from that particular "shadow distillery" (owned by Diageo, funneled into blends) has been great. Then again, I just checked my archives and apparently I've only ever had one bottle from them before, haha. I could have sworn I've had more than one before, but maybe I've just read about them. Oh well - this is a 13 year old single cask Blair Athol from the Scotch Malt Whisky Society ("SMWS"), released as a lottery pick.
The third of nine whiskies at the Scotch Malt Whisky Society ("SMWS") June 2022 Outturn tasting at the Jack Rose Saloon on Sunday, June 5th. This is from Blair Athol, one of the quasi-anonymous Diageo distilleries whose output is used for various blends - in this case, Wikipedia says it's primarily Bell's. The distillery dates to 1798, and was closed form 1932 to 1949 - then it expanded in 1973.
