Mosstowie v/s Miltonduff

[Edwin]

Ik heb een Malt zien staan genaamd Mosstowie, ik kan er weinig over vinden alleen dat het gedistilleerd is bij Miltonduff distillery, ook op whiskyfun staan niet veel bottelingen. Weet iemand wat meer over deze whisky?

[Piet]

Misschien niet op whiskyfun maar ik denk dat je toch op MaltManiacs moet zijn voor goede en misschien wel de enige informatie. In mijn boeken nog niets gevonden.

The building depicted at the right isn't the Mosstowie distillery, since that never existed, at least not as a separate set of buildings. Mosstowie was the name of the whisky that was distilled in two 'Lomond Stills' at the Miltonduff distillery between 1964 and 1981.

Vandaar dat je die waarschijnlijk niet vaak tegen zult komen. Kennelijk dus een tijdelijk verschijnsel geweest. Hij is wel in de afgelopen jaren nog gebotteld en op de markt gebracht dus het kan wel.

[semtex]

Mosstowie was the single malt produced by Lomond Stills in Miltonduff from 1964 to 1981. It was named after a hamlet about a mile away from the distillery. It’s the last distillery to have installed Lomond stills. There were two of them according to many books, which may imply the fact that these two Lomond stills worked in tandem. But as there's little information about these lomond stills I haven't been able to find out more.
The Lomond still was invented by Alistair Cunningham, who was a chemical engineer at Hiram Walker. The Canadian company needed a solution to have 42 differently flavored malts within 6 distilleries in hand. His solution was a cylindrical still with a water jacket mounted vertically above it. Within the still neck were three rectifying plates that could be adjusted horizontally and vertically, and water-cooled or left dry to vary the degree of reflux. The angle of the lyne arm could also be changed to allow for even greater control of the reflux. So, basically the whole design was to control the reflux to have different styles of malts. Alas, the process doesn't seem to have been successfu as almost all the Lomond stills installed have been taken away, mostly because the plates often became clogged with residue.
I had the experience of tasting 4 different malts produced from Lomond stills, they were quite similar, creamy, fruity and light.(I believe all were coming from bourbon casks). But remember, the Lomond still was invented to produce very different styles of malts, so the extent of difference must be the most important factor. Michael Jackson, as well as some other authors, described Mosstowie as being heavier, oilier and smokier than the normal Miltonduff, which I don’t quite agree from my experience with, for instance, the Mosstowie Duncan Taylor bottling. In fact, when Jim McEwan showed me the Lomond Still he got from Dumbarton site in 2004, he also said this kind of still will produce an extremely light style of malt. But of course he hasn’t got the chance to try that yet. I heard from him that they’ll start to re-build Port Charlotte distillery next year (2007) and they’ll use the Lomond still from Dumbarton and an old pot still from Port Charlotte in the Port Charlotte distillery. Let’s wait and see what will happen.
It is very hard to find Mosstowie's malt in the market.

tekst van MM Ho-cheng Yao.