AULTIMATUM So why don’t we have any official bottlings from Aultmore—Eh? It’s five years since Bacardi took possession of Brackla, Craigellachie, Aberfeldy and Aultmore distileries as part of their adoption of Dewar’s—necessary to satisfy the monopolies people who are there to protect the consumers’ interests. The Miami Mafia have done well with Dewar’s, increasing volume satisfactorily but their venture into single malt capitalisation—Dewar’s World of Whisky at Aberfeldy—struggles, a shame as it’s a top class display with no faults except, possibly, location. By now there should be official or blender-authorised bottlings of all their distilleries—but nope! Our Stock List includes Aberfeldy only by virtue of the enterprise of the distillery management —but why not the other three? Unfortunately there remains a middle tier of distillery owners (Bacardi, Allied, Pernod) who are under the illusion that they actually own their distilleries. Eejits! This is Scotland! You don’t own things here—you are merely custodians! These distilleries are not just component manufacturers for your blends! They are proud, individual enterprises driven by intelligent and conscientious communities born of a heritage that produced the world’s great doctors, soldiers, inventors—lawyers, [okay, 3 out of 4 ain’t bad]. In the mid-70s, a blenders’ league of singles was created recognising the desirability of distillery products. Nowadays Aultmore is the only blenders’ top-class distillery not bottled by its custodian. We know it’s good, Inverarity’s Ancestral from Aultmore is testimony to that but the ignorant brand-driven alcohol-beverage-industry players that ‘own’ Aultmore apparently are not aware of this. I suspect they are too busy dispensing their short-cut to alcoholism—the Bacardi Breezer—and ergo, devoid of self esteem about their special assets. Either that, or they are simply too idle to do anything about it.