Curious about the age of few NAS-whiskies

Somehow the paragraph change didn't go in there so in clarification:

Talisker Port Ruighe

Isle of Jura Prophecy

Arran Lochranza Reserve

Anyone?

Hey, mate. Best of luck with this one. They're NAS for a reason unfortunately. It allows the make-up to fluctuate, so at any given time the batch you're drinking could be a vastly different beast than one you tried three years back, or that you WILL try three years from now.

If I had to venture an educated guess...Prophecy around 7 or 8 years. Port Ruighe a little closer to 10. And the Arran...no idea. I've not tried. Sorry.

Good luck. Keep us posted if you hear more.

I looked into the Glenfarclas 105, this is 9 to 10 years old. Good whisky, good price. I bought 100 ml for € 30,-.

Amrut Fusion 3 to 5 years old. Whisky ages more quickly in countries like India. The angel-share is much higher than in Scotland. This bottle could be the equal of a 10 year old made in Scotland.

@DutchGaelisch

Do you mean 100cl?

@sengjc hehehe, right cl it is!

@antihero Sometimes batch variation is unfortunately present with whiskies with age statements as well. Thanks for your guesses. That's the kind of debate I was looking for. Too bad there weren't any other guesses.

It's true that the info is hard to get. Haven't ever asked directly from the distilleries so I don't know, if they're willing to provide that info. Teerenpeli from Finland did give away their NAS-whisky age statement, when I took part in their distillery tour.

Talisker did well in our tasting, here are the overall scores for 6 different Scottish Islands malts. 10 people on the panel:

1. Talisker Port Ruighe - 88,625

2. Tobermory 10 year old - 85,25

3. Scapa 16 year old - 84,75

4. Jura Prophecy - 84,25

5. Highland Park 1994 Vintage (16 year old) - 77,625

6. Arran Lochranza Reserve - 77,375

The only purpose of an age statement is to inform the customer how old the youngest whisky that was used for the vatting was. For example, the Ardbeg 10 was called a 10yo even though it (used to) contains older casks as well, to spice the whisky up a bit. The idea behind NAS whisky is to allow the distilleries to use younger whiskies without having to deal with the prejudices against young whiskies. And deal with shortages in aged whisky due to the high demand by injecting the market with more recent products. As demand increased the distillers increased their production, pushing their distilleries to the limit, but if they stuck to the age limits, it would take some time before this increase in production would take effect.

One could argue that in case the whisky market would collapse again before their larger output reached the required age, this strategy prevents them from having an overstock of aging casks without any buyers (what happened in the 80's).

My guess is that for most NAS whiskies only the distillers know their exact age and everyone else who claims to know is a fraud