After quite a long wait, it's here. The inaugural release of Dornoch Whisky has landed in Hong Kong. This is an exciting moment!

Nothing fancy here to be honest, in comparison to new whiskies in the market, or even other Thompson Bros independent releases, you can even sniff a little dullness from the bottle. There is no fancy packaging, or flamboyant bottle design. Nevertheless, a serious whisky is a serious whisky after all.

Dornoch is being very serious about their juice. Organic, floor-malted barley, long fermentation, slow distillation, there is nothing about technology, fancy gadgets whatsoever. This inaugural release is made from Organic Plumage Archer barley, matured in a single first-fill Oloroso sherry butt (cask #1), distilled in July 2017 and bottled in November 2020. This inaugural release chooses a traditional path. STR cask? Didn't happen in this bottle. Back to basic? The old-fashioned way? Whatever you want to call it.

Not going to lie, this whisky is young and is fuelled with energy and it can be quite raw. But after all, it's a symbolic bottle. Today, there are so many distilleries around the world making some greatest young whiskies everywhere. Bimber, Waterford, Akkeshi... You name it. It is simply unwise to simply judge a whisky by its age. We might be witnessing the new dawn of whisky so we might as well enjoy the ride then.