Rare and exciting whisky releases under €300 to place under your tree this December 25th

Christmas Gift Guide – The price range between €150 and €300 is a wonderful treasure chest of gift ideas and truly remarkable whiskies. It allows whisky makers the resources to experiment with cask types, production methods and bottling designs that truly impress.

For anyone charting a journey through whisky, a bottle from this price point will make an ideal gift – offering incredible flavours and personality and representing releases that could form the cornerstone of a private collection.

Here are five of our favourites for under the tree this December 25th.

BenRiach 21

This 21-year-old Speyside single malt is the top-shelf pour in Benriach’s core range. With a

four-cask maturation in ex-bourbon, sherry, new oak and Bordeaux red wine casks it represents incredible value for a whisky as complex as this. 

In addition, it also integrates peated and unpeated malt into a beautifully rich and layered taste experience. On the nose, you can expect lots of fruit and honey, while the palate delivers a long and luxurious experience with lots of cocoa, nuts, oak and spice all wrapped in sweet smoke. 

This is a bottle to impress an experienced fan of Speyside, but at a price they won’t believe. 

Dalmore 2007 Vintage

With Dalmore Distillery’s visitor experience due to reopen in 2024 after a major refurbishment, this is the perfect time to reacquaint yourself with this stellar brand – and plan a visit for the warmer months. 

The 2007 Vintage is 15 years old and pulls its flavour from a finish in Matusalem, Apostoles, Amoroso and Marsala casks. These combine to bring a silky sweet edge to the younger vintage and drive rich honeyed notes on the aroma coupled with layers of orange syrup, apples and herbs on the palate. 

This is a discontinued release making it that bit rarer and hard to come by so its value should increase. Bottled at 46.5%, it’s a rich and complex pour. 

Jameson 18

This remarkable release from Jameson is a whiskey that you mature into. Jameson fans are incredibly loyal and this excellent bottling is a just reward for standing by the brand. Matured in ex-bourbon and sherry this is a careful blend of pot still and grain whiskey hand-selected and married to create this rich and elegant release. 

With aromatic oils and lots of oak on the nose, you are led through a sherry nuttiness and onward to a vanilla-heavy, wood and spice-layered finish. Bottled at 46%, this popular core release from Midleton is an ever-popular choice and sure to impress.  

Caperdonich 21 Peated

Released as part of the Secret Speyside collection, this elegant 21-year-old single malt is a star among its peers. Secret Speyside focuses on whisky from lessor-known or lost Scottish distilleries from the Speyside region. 

There are four distilleries in the series – Caperdonich, Longmorn, Glen Keith and Braes of Glenlivet – each representing a different aspect of the Speyside whisky character.  Caperdonich is the largest of the quartet, with six bottles released from this demolished and never-to-return Speyside distillery. 

Bottled at 48%, this is the peated variant and it beautifully combines its personality of fruit and smoke. The malt was matured in ex-bourbon for its full duration and captured tons of citrus, liquorice and burnt embers from its more than two decades in oak. Secret Speyside releases always hover at the top of Christmas gift guide must have lists.

Green Spot 10 Single Cask

Fans of Green Spot never run out of enthusiasm for this much storied single pot still whiskey brand. This release is from a rare single cask of 10 years old that was bottled in collaboration with the Single Malt Shop. It’s a superb and richly-flavoured whiskey that sets out to capture the essence of the original mashbill Green Spot from the 19th century – itself a 10-year-old. 

Green Spot 10 Single Cask is stuffed with flavour, combining dark fruit notes with zesty citrus alongside vanilla and oak layers. The palate delivers bursts of all those pot-still spices with jasmine tea tannins and lots more fruit. Spice continues to reach through the finish lingering among the signature oak and vanilla notes of this wonderful release. A perfect Christmas gift guide idea.

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