There is a particular pleasure in not knowing, and Thompson Brothers, the Dorock based independant bottlers, have built an entire release around it. Mystery Malt is back for a sixth series and remains the only whisky where the thrill begins before you have even poured a drop.
The concept is simple, every bottle identical, the same opaque black glass, label and price, but what lies beneath could be a six-year-old Lochlea or a 29-year-old Ben Nevis from a refill sherry butt, you don’t know until you break the seal.
Series 6 is the most ambitious outing yet, 9,960 bottles are heading into 18 international markets, each holding one of 38 single-malt expressions drawn from distilleries spanning all five of Scotland’s whisky regions, aged between six and 29 years and bottled at 46.3% ABV. One in five bottles contains something 18 years or older.
The full batch manifest, showing every distillery, every age statement, every cask type, and the precise probability of landing each one is published on their website online and printed as a QR code on every bottle. So you can see exactly what’s in the pool, you just don’t know which one is yours until the capsule comes off.
The maths is what gives it its edge. The 29-year-old Ben Nevis exists as just 15 bottles across the entire run, 0.15% of the release, and, named and labelled by any independent bottler, it would command many times than the Mysterm Malt asking price. And the track record suggests it works: more than 25,000 bottles across the first five series, with past reveals ranging from mature Clynelish and rare 29-year-olds to debut bottlings from Lagg, Wolfburn and Kingsbarns.
Simon Thompson, co-founder of Thompson Brothers, casts the rarities as the headline act rather than the main event. “The rare bottles grab the headlines,” he says, “but the most exciting thing is seeing someone discover a distillery they’ve never tried before, and then become a fan for life.” The New Wave producers, he adds, are using Mystery Malt as a low-stakes introduction to their house style.
Series 6 went on sale on the 4th of June via their website www.mystery-malt.co.uk, and whether you crack it open or can’t bring yourself to break the seal is, of course, entirely up to you.
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