The Man with the 2.4 Million Dollar Nose Whisky Tasting

LOCH & K(E)Y Whisk(e)y Society invites you to come and meet Richard Paterson, A.K.A. “The Nose”!  Mr. Paterson, whose nose is insured at Lloyd’s for $2.4 million, is Master Distiller for The Dalmore Whisky. Richard is descended from a long line of whisky blenders, his pathway was all but pre-destined. Richard began his career at a whisky brokerage in Glasgow and following completion of his apprenticeship, joined The Dalmore where he has been Master Distiller since 1970.

Mr. Patterson is in Westborough to have whisky lovers taste his stunning re-creation of the original malt whisky shipped to Antarctica in 1907 by Ernest Shackleton to fortify his ‘Nimrod’ expedition. This dram has been a long, long time in the making. Abandoned to the Antarctic winter in early 1909, three wooden crates of this fine Mackinlay’s malt, originally distilled at Glen Mhor Distillery in Inverness, were buried in the ice beneath Shackleton’s hut.

Unearthed a century later by the New Zealand Antarctic Heritage Trust, in 2010 a single crate was flown to Canterbury Museum in Christchurch, New Zealand for conservation. Heralded as ‘a gift from heaven for whisky lovers’, this original and long-lost malt provided the inspiration and critical insight for our timeless re-creation.  Every whisky is an adventure, but this one more than most, from Glen Mhor to many years lying under Antarctic ice and then journeying back to the land of its birth.  And in many ways it is now that the adventure is really just beginning as the discovery and analysis of the original malt and Mr. Paterson’s faithful re-creation now add an exhilarating new chapter to an already epic story.

This whisky called “The Enduring Spirit”,  (Mackinlay’s Rare Old Highland Malt) has a very limited U.S. allocation.