Most Speyside relaunches in the last decade have moved in roughly the same direction: more Sherry, darker liquid, fuller body, more wood up front. Against that default, an ex-bourbon-led Speyside relaunch, the kind of profile that used to be standard for Scotch aficionados, now reads as the contrary view.

Sukhinder Singh, who currently runs Elixir Distillers, was fairly direct about the reasoning when we sat down with him late last year. “Today, I can't find a bourbon-cask whisky,” he said. “Everything has got an element of Sherry. It's heavier, richer, bigger, more wood-focused.” He misses the easy-drinking, fruit-forward register that used to anchor the category.

By his reckoning, of the major brands, only perhaps Glenmorangie and Glenfiddich have held that line. The claim holds up against the historical record. If you go back into the kind of old-and-rare cabinets that built Singh's reputation as a collector in the 1990s, Sherry-cask whiskies were indeed the exception rather than the rule, besides the odd Macallan or Glenfarclas.

With that clear perspective, what Tormore is doing under Singh is not iconoclasm. It is a return to the cask grammar that used to define how good Scotch was presented before the post-2010 Sherry-cask arms race rewrote expectations.

Tormore was the place chosen for that argument. The distillery sits in the Cromdale Hills above the Spey, and from a distance it looks more like an architectural in-joke about what a mid-century industrial site could be: green copper roofs, a clock tower and a granite face – conceived by prominent architect Sir Albert Richardson. Richardson's brief at Tormore was, by the standards of Scotch whisky distilleries, rather whimsical. None of its features were incidental to the original vision. Tormore opened in 1960 to feed Long John, the blended Scotch then owned by the American conglomerate Schenley Industries, who had bought Seager Evans in 1956 and needed reliable malt to push Long John into the United States. The buildings were a kind of pitch deck in stone, an industrial site dressed up as a corporate flagship. The whisky inside was destined for the blending vat. For most of the next sixty-odd years it stayed there, even after Pernod Ricard inherited the distillery via the 2005 Allied Domecq deal and slotted it into the Chivas Brothers supply network, where it became a discreet contributor to Ballantine's and Chivas Regal.

This is the inheritance Elixir Distillers bought in June 2022. Tens of thousands of casks, most of them refill ex-bourbon (because that is what blending stocks tend to be), and a spirit profile that almost nobody outside the trade had ever seen on its own. The acquisition followed Elixir's own corporate inflection. In late 2021, the Singh brothers sold The Whisky Exchange, the wildly successful online retailer they founded in 1999, to Pernod Ricard. Tormore, along with Elixir's independent bottling operation, remained in Singh’s hands. The brothers' second act was thus funded and freed by the first.

The Karuizawa Geisha Series which became the modern face of high end Japanese whisky collecting. Earlier this year, Christie's London Wine and Spirits put on auction two complete casks of Karuizawa whisky from Sukhinder's collection.

Singh's standing in the trade is by now hard to overstate. He has perhaps the most impressive old-and-rare collections in the world, was credited for popularising many household spirits brands in Europe, and is one of the earliest people to bottle the whisky of cult silent distillery Karuizawa. Besides his Islay project Portintruan, Tormore is one of the rare times he has had to design a single malt house style end-to-end rather than just select casks to bottle.

The Tormore Blueprint series, released in mid-2025, is the answer to the question of what Tormore’s style would be. Three 10-year-old bottlings, all at 48% ABV, identical in age and strength, differing only in the cask in which they were matured within: first-fill bourbon, custom-toasted virgin American oak, and cream Sherry butt. You taste each one and you can hear, more or less directly, what each cask shape does to the spirit – it is the kind of exercise you would expect from an independent bottler, which is precisely what Singh has been for most of his career.

Singh's reasoning maps onto the cask choice fairly tightly. “How do we showcase our spirit in the best light? Tormore is a light to medium body, elegant, fruity spirit, which automatically says it lends itself to bourbon over Sherry, especially not active Sherry, because you'll kill it. All you'll taste is Sherry and nothing else.” According to him, a cask, for a spirit with real character of its own, is supposed to be a maturation vessel rather than a flavour donor. Refill ex-bourbon and well-managed first-fill bourbon are probably the most transparent wood you can use to make whisky. They round and integrate the spirit, give it a touch of vanilla and coconut from residual oak lactones, but they do not impose a grammar of their own. Overly active Sherry and heavy toasts do impose, sometimes loudly. For an introduction to a distillery whose distillate has never had its own moment in the spotlight, the more transparent the cask, the more honest the introduction.

As for the Toasted Barrel expression, its barrels saw a long, slow toast and medium char – a recipe designed to coax more vanillin out of the oak while keeping the surface carbon layer present but not dominant. A virgin barrel, however gently toasted, imparts more flavour than a refill ex-bourbon.

The third bottling in the series, the Cream Sherry Cask, completes the triangle. Cream Sherry is the historically popular blend of a drier base like oloroso and a sweeter wine like Pedro Ximénez, and the casks bring residual sugars, dried fruit and orange peel into the spirit. Singh has been explicit that Tormore’s Sherry use will skew towards the softer, more elegant end of the spectrum, rather than of the post-2010 turn towards heavier, drier, more wood-forward Sherry styles.

(Source: Ravindran Vijay/LMDW Singapore)

We recently had the opportunity to taste the first two: the Bourbon Barrel and the Toasted Barrel, in the company of the friendly folks of La Maison Du Whisky Singapore and AV Intelligence, the high-end audio specialists, who put together a special whisky-and-jazz appreciation workshop on International Jazz Day. Ravinder from LMDW poured the drams and walked us through the spirit, and the pairing of Scotch whisky and well-amplified Melody Gardot turned out to be an even more enjoyable tasting experience than I had expected.

These whiskies are now available from La Maison du Whisky Singapore, with limited quantities also held by AV Intelligence.

Whisky Review: Tormore Blueprint Bourbon Barrels 10 Years Old Single Malt, 48% ABV

Tasting Notes

Appearance: Pale gold.

Nose: Luscious, cereally and slightly nutty. Opens with toasted vanilla and sweet malt, and then almonds and a thin walnut-skin note. Some orchard fruits: peaches and cream, green apple, a flicker of spearmint and light toasted coconut flakes in the back.

Palate: Clean and supple in the mouth with a medium-bodied texture. Honey, green apple pie, bright apricot, and then a distinctive maltiness - not a generic barley sweetness but a dry and even cereally character that runs through the centre of the dram. Flaky butter pastry dusted with castor sugar. Light baking spices that builds slowly on the back palate.

Finish: Medium length, with light barley sugar climbing back to the front and with light clean spices on the way out.

My Thoughts:

Tormore on bourbon barrels has a malt-forward, slightly cereal-driven core that the polite shelf descriptors of typical Speyside whiskies tend to undersell. There’s quite a bit of distinctive cereal and malt tones here with a faintly waxy through-line on the second sip.

The also appears to has been working as a polishing agent rather than a flavour donor. Without too much cask influence getting in the way, there is a certain inherent sweetness of the spirit you could find with powdery vanilla, luscious orchard fruits and enough texture to hold attention but without ever turning rich and heavy.

This is the bottle in this pair that lets the spirit sing the loudest, and the one that rewards a slower pour and a quieter room.

Whisky Review: Tormore Blueprint Toasted Barrels 10 Years Old, 48% ABV

Tasting Notes

Appearance: Light amber.

Nose: Thicker and more rounded, immediately. The malt is still there, but the sugars have moved up to maltose candy, stewed orchard fruit, orange peels and some caramel taking on weight. As it opens, there begins to be a distinctive cool-freshness of green melons underneath shop.

Palate: Similar structure as the Bourbon Barrel but bigger and richer no question. Opens with caramel, layered and faintly salted, with a clear toasted-pastry feel and a steady run of vanilla through the middle. A slightly more high toned baking spices, cinnamon with a touch of clove that seem to point to the virgin oak barrels. But it’s always well-moderated. The toastiness does not overrun the spirit.

As it sits, apple and green honeydew begin asserting themselves underneath the caramel, and you can taste the same fruit-forward Tormore distillate that ran the Bourbon barrel.

Finish: Medium length. Caramel and pastry stay the longest, with honey on top and soft baking spices behind and a pleasant faint toasted-grain note at the end.

My Thoughts:

This is very similar in structure but definitely denser, sweeter, and slightly more dessert-leaning of the pair. Rather than the inherent sweetness of the fruit and malt, the caramel and the spices are doing more of the talking, though the spirit is still recognisably Tormore, just refracted through slightly more toasted, woodier lens.

Elixir's specification (long toast, medium char) seems to have aimed for vanillin and warmth rather than blunt char-and-tannin, and the result is a whisky that adds a layer rather than displacing too much of the others one. The orchard fruit and the cereal core are still there if you wait for them.

In short, the Bourbon has the cleaner read on the spirit with its malt-forward, orchard-fruit centre more legible there, and as I said in the first note, that is the bottle I would pour first to understand what the distillery actually tastes like. The Toasted is the more immediately enjoyable pour, the one I would reach for on a colder evening with something rich on the table, like a dessert. They sequence well together: Bourbon Barrel first to establish the spirit, Toasted Barrel second to hear what a particular wood choice does to it.

@CharsiuCharlie