Finn Thomson Private Cask Collection | 59.6% ABV

Perth has a lot to offer; now more fantastic indy whisky as well

The day started off with heavy rain but, by the time we arrived in the city, the sun was splitting the sky and a warm breeze tickled my post-swim coiffed hair.

This is a place that, on a warm sunny day, is as wonderful to exist within as any other city. There’s a humble hustle and bustle here; the low din of street-side cafes and restaurants, dinner and glassware clinking together with resonant laughter  - it’s all music for weary ears as I meander through the historical streets of Perth. It’s a city of culture; of the arts. The modern glass and steel egg-shaped concert hall sits low in a nook beside the towering Roman facade of the Perth Museum & Art Gallery next door. Small streets split from a grid-like main drag and there’s even a tranquil waterfront precinct overlooking the fast flowing river Tay.

Aye, it’s fair to say that I love visiting my nearest city and on a day like today I feel energised because of it. There are, like every other city in the world, areas that are in need of TLC, with people struggling to get by, and tolerance is a sorely underutilised human ability these days. Perth is a frustratingly cyclical city where it undergoes rapid, welcome growth in retail, infrastructure and leisure; patrons are drawn from far and wide to luxuriate in the plethora of big-brand shops and little solo-trading outlets, and the reputation as a legitimate destination city grows with each passing week. But then the inevitable downward spiral, where these streets once lined with interesting and inspiring small businesses, find they are unable to sustain the seasonal shift of footfall and reluctantly shut up shop, making the beautifully paved streets of the city empty and soulless once more. We’ve watched it happening for so many years and felt the visceral pang of disappointment when the echo from footsteps can be heard reverberating down the high street, but right now we're in the heyday of an upward cycle; we celebrate it and enjoy it, while we can.

My beeline today is for the continental-vibe of George Street, throwing its path in a gentle arc from the tail end of the High Street, northwards to intersect with Bridge Lane; that aforementioned ancient Roman facade of the museum can be seen from start to finish. Along this typically quiet street reside many interesting shops. The funky-smelling, stacked to bursting delicatessen Provender Brown has loads of tasty treats on their groaning shelves - something for everyone. There’s a bike shop fixing a flat mountain bike tyre on the pavement. Art galleries, cafes, homewares, tattooists, wedding dress makers and all other manner of trades are here and I think, out of all the places in Perth we visit on a weekend, it’s my favourite street. Maybe that’s because there’s also a lovely wee whisky shop, about to celebrate its one-year anniversary, stocking pretty much every core bottling that us whisky exciters could ever want or need. It’s safe to say that the Malts and Spirits Company are doing things right. 

I’ve chatted to Steve, the proprietor, a few times now and he’s an incredibly knowledgeable chap with superb taste in whisky, with similar attitudes to us when it comes to things like Springbank, Daftmill and Talisker; Steve was the guy that pointed me towards Craigellachie.

We chatted today about Dramface, about how wonderful Glen Garioch is and about the single bottle of Springbank 10 that sits, for sale, in the middle of his shop -  “I tend not to broadcast it”. Seeing a bottle of Springbank anywhere is like seeing a Fabergé Egg in Tesco; it’s impossible not to gasp - the whole concept of why that’s even a thing is a bit of a shame but here it sits, ready for the next lucky patron. I’ve got an open bottle of Springbank at home, and that’s enough for me, so it continued to sit after I left. And anyway, I was here to collect something else, something far more interesting to me and a brand that’s only recently made its way on to the market via some pretty swish marketing: a new independent bottler by the name of Finn Thomson.

I said to Steve that Finn Thomson seemed to have appeared from nowhere, and he politely, diplomatically tells me I’m talking absolute pish. I had a brief lesson in the Thomson family legacy and what looks set to become a bit of a primo bottler, if they can keep the speculators from getting interested. It’s going to be a hard task given the incredible presentation of the whisky, but I’ll get to that. First a little digging to get myself up to speed on what this family of whisky entrepreneurs have done, and what it means for us as whisky exciters. 

A family of entrepreneurs that span 300 years, the Thomson family have ties in whisky dating back to the 18th Century. In the darkness of the Grandtully valley, his daylight trade of farming concluded for the day, James Thomson heads to his secret stills to produce illicit whisky. James’ great-grandson Alexander sets up shop in Perth and, alongside the Grandtully distillery, now legal and producing whisky from small premises, sells their whisky in his Perth shop under the name Old Grandtully Whisky. This shop, passed from father to son, from Alexander to Peter, soon makes way for Peter’s own entrepreneurial spirit when he opens his own whisky merchant / grocery shop on Perth High Street. This business grows, alongside a quite excellent pun on a newly opened Gleneagles Hotel, renaming his blended whisky “Beneagles”. One can only imagine the heat generated by the rubbing hands of intellectual property lawyers were that to happen today - stick a heat-exchanger between their palms and boom - what energy crisis? And so the legacy continues, with the blossoming business passing down from generation to generation until it reaches Michael Thomson who, under his charge, expands the business to become wine and spirits agents and, after selling the Beneagles brand, keeps the stock of whisky casks.

It’s here that the Thomson family collection of ageing casks begins, for it was Michael who began the storage of casks being opened and explored today. Fronting the family name in the 21st Century, in this modern landscape of whisky interest, is a chap called Finn. After a chat with his dad and sister on a sunset walk, the decision was made to finally take his family’s stock of casks and peer into the oak memory banks to see what’s what. Out of that cache of casks, now being bottled, we are seeing the first releases appearing in a split of Core, Rare and Crown collections.

In the inaugural Core collection there’s three bottlings: a 15yo Caol Ila, a 14yo Mannochmore and a 9yo Blair Athol; an Inchgower is on the way, finished it seems in a red wine cask but at the time of review it’s still a silhouetted apparition on the website. Each core range bottling is presented at cask strength, un chill-filtered and natural colour - the trio of welcome tick boxes. From the Rare collection we see an Auchentoshan 32yo, a Dufftown 32yo and a single grain North British 34yo - again naturally presented at maximum potency. Finally from the Crown collection there’s a The Glenlivet 50yo which certainly looks pretty great - a charred oak presentation box featuring loads of symbolism and meaning, from the nine rings tying into the nine generations, to the inverse cask aesthetic - inside out - to show what a charred cask interior looks like, to the brass etched closures and etched glass bottle. They all look pretty great, for the presentation - by which I mean the packaging - is some of the nicest I think I’ve seen in a long time.

There’s been some proper effort put in here, and money too, for I can’t imagine a custom nonagon glass bottle is cheap to manufacture, nor the bespoke ceramic stopper that comes with each bottle - things that cost loads of money given that the economies of scale are not available in these types of bottlings. There’s no 16,000 bottle outturn here - around 300 bottles of each core range expression are offered and this means minimum order quantities are going to be quite inefficient.

I hum and haw - there’s talk of hit and miss indy bottlings all the time and despite my love for the Alistair Walker Whisky Co’s Infrequent Flyers range, I’ve had one of two bottles that haven’t quite landed for me. The price of Finn Thomson’s launch range starts at £55 (online) for the Blair Athol all the way to £475 for the Rare Collection Dufftown. I have no idea what The Glenlivet 50yo will cost, but with a box like that and whisky nearly as old as Doog, I expect there to be at least four digits in the price, if not five. I decide it’s worth the punt given my recent altercation with the Flora & Fauna Blair Athol 12yo - I want to see what Blair Athol has to offer at cask strength, so I put in an order for the Blair Athol 9yo to Steve for collection at his shop. We chatted about the cask quality the Thomson family have and Steve’s face says all I need to know - these Thomson casks look like they’re going to deliver some fantastic whisky.

Review

Finn Thomson Blair Athol 9yo 2022 release, 59.6% ABV
£60 available online

I get home and unpack the bag to reveal a striking nonagon cardboard tube. I don’t like cardboard tubes anymore, given that I put any new whisky I buy on the illuminated supershelf and thus have no need for a tube (plus the obvious environmental benefits), but when it’s as lovely as this one I’ll forgive them. The papers used, the debossing and foiling are all pristine. It looks, for want of a better word, special. This sentiment continues when the bottle is extracted from the tube - the faceted glass glistens like a gemstone in the fading August sun; the amber contents refract in a mesmerising show of rainbows and golden glow. The choice of papers and design prowess continues on to the bottle, with subtle swirling textured papers used for the neck band and main label, with a differently textured black band for the bottling information. The labels are all perfectly aligned on the bottle - straight, central and clean. I’m really taken with this whole aesthetic - it’s simple but it’s effective, tasteful and pleasing. One thing that’s a bit of a bummer is that, upon excitedly removing the metal cap from the tube, I reached in to touch that cool ceramic stopper - looking very much like a slab of tasty nougat, to find etched wood; there was no fancy stopper here for me. 

Finn reached out after I mentioned it on social media, and said that the ceramic stoppers are real, are happening, but were not ready in time for the inaugural launch. They’re being made in conflict stricken Ukraine and will be launching instead with their 2nd release in November. I have no complaints about this at all - that they’re even considering these expensive ceramic stoppers for bottles of whisky costing £60 is amazing, but to have them manufactured in a place going through serious turmoil and, as a result, seeing delays in their production of goods… I think we can all survive without our bloody ceramic stoppers for now.

A few shots have been fired at Finn Thomson for making so much noise upon launching the new brand, and for some it’s been a bit of an irritant - shouting persistently about something can cause some hackles to rise, but for me I’ve not really seen much about Finn Thomson (hence the reprimand I got from Steve) and my approach in life is always that, if there’s a lot of mouth, there needs to be a lot of trousers. If the whisky doesn’t land, then I’m well within my rights to go straight for the jugular. Can any whisky live up to such intense hype, noise, slick websites, beautiful bottles and handy pricing? It’s time I found out for myself.

Nose

Vanilla, oak and chocolate in abundance. Nuts and delicate spice. Sweet and alluring. Hints of natural yoghurt appear and go. Metal-clad chocolate Christmas pennies.

Palate

Vibrant, bright fruit, mango and a burst of coffee cream fondant. Flat cola, unlit cigars, chocolate. Fruit and nut. Chewy raisins and toasted almonds - it’s all here. It’s all lovely.

With water - sweet bread - brioche appears. Peshwari naans. A burst of fragrant, freshly ground coffee. Toffee apples and syrupy tarts, but I quite quickly head back to cask strength, because it’s so delicious.

The Dregs

It’s easy to overthink this, so I’ll just come out and say it: this is great whisky. It’s a delicious, decadent, surprising, moreish, quaffable cask strength whisky. It’s potent and carries serious heft, but it’s also silk in the mouth, flowing down the pipe with reckless ease - some whiskies tickling the arse of 60% ABV are as hot as a Skegness summer, volatile and as grippy as a monkey wrench around the nipple. This, surprisingly, is not any of that. It’s bold, flavourful and mouth-coating, but in an assuredly tempered manner. The label notes read matter of fact: this is Cadbury’s Fruit & Nut in liquid form and I always take these statements with a pinch of salt, because more often than not my palate struggles to pick out such delicate things as fennel seeds or cacao nibs, but in this instance it’s bang on the money. It’s chocolatey, fruity and creamy. Vanilla in spades, chewy raisins hiding among the crunch of toasted almonds.

More than that, there’s delicate flavours here too, that come and go and reappear again. The sweet malty brioche note is clearly identifiable and present, before disappearing back into the melting pot of liquid milk chocolate. There’s oak, not quite potent enough to be considered leathery by Dougie standards - but it's delicate too. A natural yoghurt whiff, fleeting and passive. Coffee - there and gone. The last time I found this experience in whisky was with the Benromach Abbey Exclusive, and it made for a wonderful evening of discovery. Changeable drams are tremendous fun because you are constantly engaged, looking out for what’s going to surprise you next.

This bottle costs around £60 which is a fair bit of money, perhaps not for whisky in 2022’s landscape, but in a world landscape of rising cost of living and heating versus eating choices. Given that Finn Thomson has been able to release whisky off the back-end of a global two-year pandemic, with this level of presentation and quality shows that the noise was warranted and so too the asking price for this Blair Athol. The trousers are as good as the mouth, and given the disappointing reality of core range bottles rocketing in price and falling in availability, I’m turning to indies more and more to find my bang for bucks.

This is the cheapest bottling in the launch range but it’s delivering supreme enjoyment compared to bottles costing far more than this (still looking at you Mortlach 16). On a cost vs enjoyment scale this is landing bigly, so I can do nothing more than recommend you head out there and try some for yourself. I have seen some reports of the Caol Ila not living up to its £105 price tag, but who knows what expectations these online influencers had set for that Caol Ila, or what they hoped it would be or give them. If you expect a Ferrari and a family Ford arrives, you’re always going to be disappointed. The issue, I guess, with Instahoot reviews is that the mechanics behind those few words under the pictures, are hidden - we don’t know why they don’t like it, other than it’s not matching their hopes. Fortunately for all you, suffering valiantly through this, I’m able to give you a painfully elaborate perspective of why I think this way about this whisky.

The only question that remains for me is one that makes my exit passage close faster than the traps set around Wally’s countryside estate; it’s a question that barks at the assured statement made in the podcast that announced, with confidence, that I’d never spend £185 on a whisky. Well, surprisingly I have found £185 entering my whisky wallet recently, and ever since I’ve been thinking about what to buy. My natural instinct is to go for many cheaper bottles to spread my experience over more whisky rather than plop it on one really expensive bottle. The most I’ve ever spent on whisky was £120 when I bought a bottle of Arran 21 to celebrate an extremely tough year in 2021, and I had the shakes for a week afterwards. Spreading that risk over many cheaper bottles is a safe way to go. But if the Blair Athol is this good, and if what Steve says about cask quality in the Thomson collection is correct, and if my experience with a 32yo Cameronbridge grain whisky sampled at Cadenhead’s Warehouse Tasting in Campbeltown is anything to go by, then the Rare Collection North British 34yo looks more and more exciting a prospect to auld Doog. Could it be appearing soon on the illuminated super shelf? 

I’ll let you know when I’ve stopped wringing my hands at the prospect of spending one hundred and eighty five bloody pounds on a bloody whisky.

Score: 7/10

Tried this? Share your thoughts in the comments below. DC

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