Auchroisk was built to do a job, and it does it with quiet competence. In the early 1970s, Justerini & Brooks went looking for a reliable malt heart for J&B, and they found it here, drawn by the soft water of Dorie’s Well near Mulben in Banffshire. Construction began in 1972, production followed in 1974, and for years most of what ran off these stills disappeared into blending vats without much fuss.

That water matters. It is exceptionally soft, which helps explain the distillery’s clean, steady style. Auchroisk also leans into a fairly muscular make: quick mashing and relatively short fermentations are often cited, and the stills are run to give a spirit with texture rather than perfume. The result, once it has had time in wood, tends to land in a satisfying middle ground, malty and honeyed with a gentle spice, more about breadth than fireworks.

It did, however, have a brief moment under a friendlier name. In 1986, Diageo sold an Auchroisk single malt as “The Singleton”, largely because “Auchroisk” was thought a bit of a tongue twister outside Scotland. That original Singleton later faded away, and Auchroisk returned under its own name, including the Flora & Fauna 10 year old, while the modern Singleton range moved on to other distilleries. If you ever spot “Singleton of Auchroisk” on an old label, you have found a small piece of that earlier experiment.