Springbank 30 Year Old Milroy Selection (bottled 1990s)
Colour: pale gold.
Nose: you are immediately transported to another dimension, all these layers and layers of ripe green and exotic fruits interlaced with heather and flower honeys, soft medicines, aged herbal liqueurs and resinous fir woods. Simple in some ways, but stunning fresh, vibrant and gloriously vivid. With water: probably scratch what I said about simplicity. Becomes more and more complex now with water, taking on mineral and salty qualities with impressions of beach pebbles, vapour rubs, crystallised fruits and aged mead.
Mouth: superb attack, peppery and medicinal but then lots of fruit salad juices and fruit syrups. Guava, mango, rhubarb and custard boiled sweeties, star fruit and grapefruit. Still a lot of honey too. With water: outstanding now! Combines medicines, honeys and gorgeously fresh fruits with a perfect saltines, mineral salts and some superbly sharp herbal notes. Finish: long, salty, honeyed, exotically fruity and still full of medicinal herbs and resinous wood extracts without ever really being 'woody'.
Score: 92/100 ' yet another outstanding and hugely pleasurable old Springbank from slap bang in the distillery's glory years'
- Angus MacRaild, whiskyfun.com
Milroy's Soho Wine Market was established in 1964 by John and Wallace Milroy at a time when drinkers in England were just beginning to appreciate the single malts of Scotland. The Milroy brothers are credited for promoting and distributing Scotch Whisky in London and beyond for over three decades, even supplying the whiskies to No.10 Downing Street in this period.
In the late 1980s while touring Balvenie, they famously spotted some casks distilled in 1937 gathering dust. The Grant family agreed to bottle them and this became the first Balvenie 50 Year old. Rather amusingly, the Milroys ended up taking delivery of 300+ bottles of their Balvenie 50 Year Old, something almost unimaginable today.
By the time they sold the business in 1993, around the same time that this Springbank was bottled, they were among the leading whisky authorities of their era whilst also going down in history as some of London's most legendary party people.
In addition to their retail and wholesale operations, they were adept at selecting and bottling the occasional cask under their own label - of which this is one of their greatest hits.
Bottle size: 70cl
Alcohol: 50%
Shipped weight: 4kg
