Living Souls

Three whisky makers with long experience in the Scottish industry. Calum Leslie was Head of Innovation at the Loch Lomond Group, Jamie Williamson founded the wholesaler Kilninian Spirits and spent many years at Douglas Laing, and John Torrance has more than twenty years in the trade, including spells at Diageo and Tullibardine. In 2024 they founded Living Souls together in Glasgow, built on careful cask selection and experimental maturation.

So that Laphroaig's own smoke takes centre stage. A refill bourbon cask has held whisky before and gives less vanilla and colour than a first-fill cask. That keeps the medicinal, coastal Islay character unaltered. This 11 year old Laphroaig is bottled at 50% ABV, without colouring or chill filtration. If you know Laphroaig, you will taste a pure, unpolished version here.

A blend of 50% Glenrothes malt whisky from sherry casks and 50% North British grain whisky from bourbon and sherry casks. North British has been a large grain distillery in Edinburgh since 1885, supplying mainly the blending industry. Here Living Souls shows how rich a blend can be when both parts mature for a long time: seventeen years, with toffee, dried fruit and a soft, rounded finish.

Both come from the Highland distillery Tullibardine, but they matured differently. The Living Souls Tullibardine 11 Year Old shows the soft, honey-sweet house style without extra cask influence. The Duncan Taylor Octave Tullibardine 10 YO 2013 received additional maturation in a small Octave cask of around 50 litres, which adds more wood, colour and spice. Taste them side by side to discover what the cask does.

For drinking, and that is exactly the idea. Living Souls makes flavour-led whisky in small batches, meant to be opened and shared rather than kept behind glass. Even a mature bottle like the Speyburn 18 Year Old, matured entirely in first-fill bourbon casks, is made to be enjoyed. Each bottling does appear in a limited batch, which gives every bottle a character of its own.