Old Pulteney is from Wick, Scotland which is right in the north east corner of the Scottish mainland. There are two distlilleries on Orkney Island to the north (Highland Park and Scapa), but Wick is almost as north as you can go on the Scottish mainland. The old Pulteney website (www.oldpulteney.com) is interesting and claims that old Pulteney uses techniques that "other distillers have long abandoned"!? hmmm. The shape of the bottle reflects the unique shape of the stills they use, which lack a traditional swan neck.
This is a nice reasonably smooth Scotch, slightly more "salty" tasting then the sweeter Speysides I have tried, such as Aberlour. This Scotch is definitely less sweet and more salty, with a slight sweet note at the end, and a clean finish.
"Salty" isn't a great description. This does not taste like a bag of potato chips (or crisps for our UK readers). It is more like an aftertaste....if you put some salt in your mouth and then quickly spit it out and waited thirty seconds. That taste.
There is no smokiness or grandiose complexity to this scotch. For people who do not like sweet scotches, and also don't like smoke, this is a good choice at a reasonable price.
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