Whisky Review: Hart Brothers Littlemill 20 Year 1984/2005

Hart Brothers released a second 1984 Littlemill, this time for the American market. This gave me a solid opportunity to compare and contrast.

This whisky was distilled in April 1984, aged in what I'm guessing was a refill hogshead, then bottled in January 2005 at 46% without coloring or chill filtration.

Thanks to MAO for a sample. You can find his review as well as Michael's, which all came from the same bottle.

Whisky Review: Hart Brothers Littlemill 20 Year 1984/2005

Nose: gently floral, sour green malt underneath, a little chlorine/bromine, bubblegum, generic bourbon cask fruit, cake batter, frosting mixed with putty, tempura paint, Aquafresh toothpaste, slightly rancid butter, freshly treated lumber. After adding a few drops of water the fruit becomes stronger and more grape-like, pushing back some of the unpleasant chemical notes and leaving a less offensive mustiness, and some honey notes come out.

Taste: opens with crisp sweetness mixed with a peculiar grassiness, cooked string beans, and generic fruit esters that fade into bittersweet oak and vegetation near the back. After dilution the sweetness becomes somewhat cleaner and pushes back the vegetal/metallic bitterness a bit until the end, bigger fruit notes come out around the middle, but the constituent elements remain largely unchanged.

Finish: bittersweet grassiness/seaweed, bitter metallic/decaying oak, raisins?

Despite what my tasting notes would suggest, this was initially somehow less bad than the previous release. It's still nothing I would drink for pleasure, but I found it less difficult to struggle through the sample. On the other hand, it also didn't improve noticeably during the second tasting. This may be because it's a sample from a full bottle, so it had already aired out as much as it was going to, in comparison to a miniature that had been opened for the first time. So not the worst thing I've drunk, but still nothing that anyone should pay money for.

And yet! People still do, because of the current obsession with closed distilleries people have paid well over $200 for a bottle of this pond water. Just goes to show the importance of independent reviews. Between the three of us who have written about this bottle, I would like to think that no one will ever be so foolish as to buy it at auction again. But I know the market and that will probably happen anyway. Their loss.

Whisky Review: Hart Brothers Littlemill 20 Year 1984/2004

It says a lot about the esteem that Littlemill was held in until very recently that I was able to pick up this miniature for all of about £10 when I bought it at The Good Spirits Co in Glasgow in 2013. I figured "How often will I get to try a 20 year old whisky for that kind of money?" Little did I know what I was getting into.

This was distilled in April 1984, aged in what I'm guessing was some kind of refill ex-bourbon casks, then bottled in September 2004 at 46% without coloring or chill filtration.

Hart Brothers Littlemill 20 Year 1984/2004

Nose: chemical disinfectant, chlorine, green malt, dusty pine, vanilla frosting, berry esters, citrus (orange, lemon, lime), incense, and growing cask influence. After adding a few drops of water, the unpleasant chemical notes become even stronger, partially balanced by increased cask influence, while some floral notes are added.

Taste: opens with saccharine sweetness that carries through all the way to the back, quickly joined by grass clippings and some kind of unpleasant solvent/chemical note with a touch of citrus oil, with some bourbon cask notes hiding in the background. After dilution the cask influence moves towards the front along with an earthy quality, somewhat helping to obscure the off-notes but not entirely succeeding.

Finish: bitter grass clippings, citrus pith, green malt

On my first tasting this made me wonder that the place wasn't shut down earlier (though the same question might be asked of North Port/Brechin). While there were occasional hints of something better hiding behind the chemical stink, this is a strong contender for one of the worst single malts I've ever tried, in its own way almost as off-putting as the Glen Elgin that smelled like burning hair.

On the second tasting some of the worse elements had dimmed, leaving the better parts amplified, especially on the nose. The palate was still kind of a mess, but at least slightly less offensive. Still, not really something I'd want to drink other than as a curiosity, but at least a glimpse of what the distillery could potentially be.

Whisky Review: Littlemill 12 Year

While the latest official Littlemill release may be on sale for ten times what most 25 year olds are now priced, this positive evaluation of its status is a very recent phenomenon.

With a few exceptions, only a few years ago the highest praise you were likely to find for Littlemill was "Well, it's not bad." And more frequently some variation of 'awful' was found in tasting notes. To put it mildly, there weren't that many people who were all that sad it had been shut down.

The official bottlings played a major role in developing that reputation. I tried the green bottle 8 Year a while back and found it underdeveloped but interesting. As with the rest of the beige label 12 Year lineup put out by Loch Lomond for their various active and inactive distilleries during the early-2000s, the general consensus was not overwhelmingly positive.

This was bottled at 43%, almost certainly with coloring and chill filtration.

Littlemill 12 Year

Nose: sweet malt, metallic, cardboard, vague fruitiness (mixed Starburst candy), dried flowers, a touch of fish oil. After adding a few drops of water all of the strangeness coalesces into something that makes me think of burning berries, rubber, and roots/vegetation with a little vanilla.

Taste: malt sweetness throughout with a slightly metallic edge, cardboard-y oak, big but slightly artificial fruit flavors (berries, banana, melon) around the middle, fading out through dry malt and growing cardboard and metallic/rubbery character. After dilution the sweetness becomes more straightforwardly sugary, edging out some of the other flavors but making everything seem brighter overall.

Finish: vague fruit esters, dry malt, metallic oak

My initial impressions of this whisky were, to put it mildly, not good.

While you can tell from my tasting notes that it eventually settled down, it never lost that sense of being aggressively weird.

Given what Littlemill is now going for (the same bottle I just reviewed now goes for upwards of $150 in Europe), this is likely to the be last one I ever try. For the $30-odd I paid for it, this was totally acceptable as a curiosity. While the initial awfulness burned off, it never blossomed into anything spectacular, just acceptable. If you're burning to try a Littlemill, it wouldn't hurt to sample some at a bar, but I wouldn't spend any effort hunting this down. Despite all the current Littlemill hype, it's just not that good.

Whisky Review: Littlemill 8 Year

Littlemill was, before it was closed in 1996 and then burned down in 2004, the oldest operating distillery in Scotland. Its beginnings go back to the 1772, when it was built in the village of Bowling, along the river Clyde between Dumbarton and Clydebank, northwest of Glasgow. Production carried on largely uninterrupted (except for a brief closure between 1929 and 1931, at which point they ceased triple distillation in favor of double) until 1984, when the distillery was shuttered for the first time. It was rocky from there on, with a brief reopening between 1989 and 1994, when it was was purchased by the Loch Lomond Distillery. For reasons unknown, the new owners never started operating it again, instead dismantling it in the late-90s.

Littlemill appears to have been a slightly odd place during the 20th century, with its owners trying many experimental setups that may or, more likely, may not have improved the whisky. For some time, four of the six stills were fitted with Lomond heads, which contained rectifying plates that were supposed to allow the distillers to produce many different types of spirit from the same stills by increasing or decreasing the amount of reflux. However, they were extremely difficult to clean and didn't appear to produce spirit popular with blenders, as intended. More wildly, the stills were covered in aluminum, presumably to reduce the amount of radiative heat loss. Considering the distillery's fate, it seems like they would have been better off sticking with simple pot stills.

This particular bottle was released sometime in the late-90s or early-2000s from the distillery's remaining stock alongside a 17 year old in a similar bottle, which were both phased out for a 12 year old in the early-2000s. It was bottled at 43%, likely with chill-filtration and maybe a little caramel coloring. While these bottles are getting rather rare, I was able to try a dram at the Highland Stillhouse.

Littlemill 8 Year

Nose: green apples, yeast, brown sugar, malt, grapes, fresh leaves, very light acetone/solvent, hints of citrus (orange peel?), pancakes/waffles. After adding a few drops of water, some musky cognac and cinnamon toast notes come out.

Taste: a lot of new make flavor that is almost covered up by malt sweetness and green apples/grapes, pineapple in the middle, and grainy/bitter malt at the back. After dilution, the green malt/new make notes integrate into the malt sweetness, there is more grainy bitterness at the back, and floral overtones emerge.

Finish: green malt, grain, very mild oak, oat cakes

This is clearly a young malt without a lot of oak influence. As Michael Kravitz describes them, a 'naked' malt. The new make character is a little too assertive for me to think of this as more than a curiosity, but it gives me some hope for the older 12 Year that I have waiting to open. With a little more time, the new make may have faded in favor of the rather nice fruit esters.