An American Whiskey Aged in America and Scotland

Taking its name from an interval between the notes of some musical scales, The Perfect Fifth is a Miami-based independent bottler that was established in 2019. The label tends to gravitate toward ultra-aged single malt scotches, which are sourced and bottled as limited edition age-stated single cask expressions. Its newest release is an age-stated single cask American whiskey.

The new whiskey, Canongate 14 year old, was distilled in 2009 at Heaven Hill's distillery in Bardstown, Kentucky. It was aged for 3 years in Kentucky before being sent to Scotland for a secondary maturation that lasted 11 years. The Perfect Fifth bottled this whiskey at 64.4% ABV. It was released as a follow-up to an earlier The Perfect Fifth expression called Canongate 11 year old which debuted in 2020. That one, also from Heaven Hill, was pulled from a cask of the same vintage and followed a similar split-location aging process as the new one, but its secondary maturation lasted 8 years and it had an ABV of 61.6%.

Canongate 14 year old’s designation as an American whiskey rather than a bourbon is due to its proof. While bourbons can be bottled at various proof points, legally they can’t be higher than 62.5% ABV when they’re first barreled. Canongate 14’s time spent in Scotland’s colder climate should’ve dropped the proof far below that figure, yet it’s almost a full 2% higher than it should have been from the start. The team noticed this abnormality when they began to bottle the expression, and deduced that it must’ve been casked higher than 62.5% ABV and thus couldn’t be labeled as a bourbon.

Only 232 bottles of Canongate 14 year old were released in the U.S., which can be found online or at retailers in California, New Jersey, and New York with a suggested retail of $175.