Old Pulteney

From the shop floor to the still house

The cask decision comes before the release name. Malcolm Waring, Distillery Manager at Old Pulteney in Wick, works where selection has to answer to sea air, warehouse time and the house line. He began at Pulteney in 1990 in distillery production roles, on the shop floor rather than above it, then moved through Brewing Manager and Assistant Distillery Manager before managing Knockdhu and returning to Old Pulteney as Distillery Manager. That route matters here because the Wick plant is not an abstract brand setting. Waring’s authority is practical, built through the sequence of production, brewing, assistant management and site leadership.

His work sits at the point where distillation practice and coastal character meet. Old Pulteney’s public language returns often to Wick, and Waring states the connection plainly: “Old Pulteney is all about the sea.” In a Highland distillery on the shores of Wick Harbour, that is not decorative phrasing. It is the context in which the whisky is made, matured and judged against the house identity.

Casks chosen for a Wick statement

The program at Old Pulteney is built around single malt Scotch whisky, with production listed at 900,000 litres per year. The house is known for a maritime profile shaped by coastal maturation, and Waring’s role is to keep that note coherent across core bottles and limited releases. The Old Pulteney 12 year old sits close to the distillery’s central expression, while the Old Pulteney Port Bottling, the Old Pulteney Distillery Exclusive and the 200th Anniversary Distillery Exclusive point to cask selection as a working discipline.

The Distillery Exclusive is the clearest example of that method in public view. It was the first-ever distillery-exclusive single malt and made from hand-selected casks, which places the emphasis on choosing stock for a particular statement rather than simply moving mature whisky into a new label. At the bench-side of whisky making, selection is not a flourish. It is a control point, one of the places where the manager’s palate and the distillery’s identity have to meet.

Quiet work beside Wick Harbour

The room around the work is intimate rather than theatrical. Old Pulteney sits in Pulteneytown on the Wick Harbour shore, with a traditional working distillery feel and a quietness that suits a place where maturation carries much of the argument. The setting gives the whisky its frame: coastal air, stone, warehouse patience, guides who speak in the close register of a house that still feels personal.

Inside that atmosphere, the craft remains physical. The still house, the warehouse and the tasting room all return to the same question of continuity: how a distillery keeps a coastal line steady without making it rigid. Waring’s career gives the answer its weight. He has time on the tools at this site, and the releases carry that discipline back to Wick Harbour.