This is a pre arrival offering with a firm cutoff date. Timing is an estimate and can shift due to carrier schedules, port congestion, customs, or warehouse receiving.
Obscurities & Curiosities, Secret Speyside (M) 10 Year Old, 1st Fill Oloroso
Distilled in 2016, ten years in a first fill sherry hogshead, bottled in 2026 by North Star Spirits at 64.7% cask strength, and the darkest whisky in this import by a distance. The distillery is Speyside, it begins with M, and the label is not allowed to say more than that. We are not allowed to either. We all know what M means.
What we can say: the cask came through Edrington, the sherry wood is first fill from a house that takes sherry wood more seriously than anyone in Scotland, and the spirit inside is the one that made sherried Speyside famous. Iain Croucher's note when he offered it: also very dark, 1st fill sherry, thank you Edrington. At 64.7% it is a sherry bomb with the pin pulled. 314 bottles for the United States, which is a lot of a whisky this good at this price.
About Obscurities & Curiosities
In North Star's own words: sometimes we are lucky enough to find whiskies that are astonishing oddities and bizarrely exceptional. The deliciously obscure whisky in this bottle has certainly piqued our curiosity. Please take a seat and enjoy the show.
Obscurities & Curiosities is the sideshow range from North Star Spirits, Iain Croucher's Dumbarton bottler, now ten years old. Vintage circus posters on the labels, serious casks inside: every release carries a real age statement and full sherry maturation. The Miltonduff 13 Octave was the first O&C to reach America; this is the second wave.
Distillery profile, undisclosed
- A Speyside distillery whose owners do not permit its name on independent bottlings, which is why it appears as Secret Speyside, or simply M, across the independent trade.
- The parent company, Edrington, is famous for buying and seasoning its own sherry casks in Jerez, which is why an Edrington-sourced first fill sherry hogshead is such a prize.
- House style, as everyone who has tasted it knows: rich, sherried, dried fruit and spice, built for exactly this wood.
- If you have ever paid four figures for a sherried ten year old from this distillery under its own name, this is the bottle to pour next to it.
Cask profile, 1st fill sherry hogshead
A first fill sherry hogshead is as much wood influence as a whisky can take in ten years: colour, dried fruit, walnut, clove, chocolate. This one had never held whisky before.
The result is, in Iain Croucher's words, very dark. Ten years was enough. At 64.7%, water is not a suggestion, it is part of the experience.
The label is the O&C sideshow strongman in red: a vintage circus poster for a whisky that cannot say its own name. Outturn to follow when the bottles land.
On Tasting Notes
You will not find tasting notes here. By design.
The Whiskey Lab publishes every technical detail a curious drinker could ask for: distillery, cask, distillation date, ABV, outturn. Everything that makes the liquid what it is. What we leave to you is the experience of drinking it.
Tasting notes shape expectation. They tell you what you should find before you find it. Our position is that the spirit in your glass should speak for itself, and what you find there belongs to you. Pour it neat. Add a few drops of water if it asks for it. Take your time. The cask did.
| Specification | Details |
|---|---|
| Brand | North Star Spirits, Obscurities & Curiosities |
| Style | Single malt Scotch whisky, single cask |
| Region | Speyside |
| Distillery | Undisclosed (M) |
| Age | 10 years |
| ABV | 64.7% (cask strength) |
| Volume | 700ml |
| Cask | 1st Fill sherry hogshead, full maturation, Edrington-sourced |
| Distilled | 2016 |
| Bottled | 2026 |
| Natural colour | Yes, very dark |
| Non-chill filtered | Yes |
| USA allocation | 314 bottles |
| Availability | Pre-order, October Import, arrives November 4, 2026 |
The Whiskey Lab's Quality Commitments
- Single Cask & Small Batch: Ensuring a unique profile for each release.
- Natural Colour & Non-Chill Filtered: Preserving the authentic character and purity of the whisky.
- Honest Storytelling: Every cask profile written by people who actually handled the liquid.
