There are bottles you drink, and there are bottles that carry the weight of a particular moment in Irish whiskey history. The Midleton Very Rare Bot.1985 is the latter — one of the earliest releases in what would become Ireland's most prestigious annual series, bottled at a time when the country's whiskey industry was still pulling itself out of decades of near-terminal decline. Holding one of these is like holding a dispatch from the front lines of a revival that nobody was yet certain would succeed.
The Midleton Very Rare range was the brainchild of Master Distiller Barry Crosbie, launched in 1984 as an annual limited release blending the finest pot still and grain whiskeys available from the Midleton distillery complex in County Cork. The 1985 bottling represents just the second year of the programme — a time when the concept of a premium, collectible Irish whiskey was still a radical proposition. The industry had consolidated from dozens of distilleries to essentially one operational site. This bottle is a survivor from that era, and its rarity is not manufactured. It is earned.
At 40% ABV and carrying no age statement, the Bot.1985 follows the house style of the series: a blend constructed not around a number on the label but around the judgement of the blender, selecting from a range of aged pot still and grain stocks. The NAS designation here is not evasion — it is philosophy. Crosbie and his successors always maintained that Midleton Very Rare was about the quality of the marriage, not the age of the components. Given the depth of aged stock available at Midleton even in the mid-1980s, one can reasonably expect mature, well-integrated whiskey in this bottle.
Tasting Notes
As a 1985 bottling that has spent four decades in glass, specific tasting notes would depend heavily on storage conditions — how it was kept, whether the fill level has dropped, whether light or heat has touched the spirit over the years. Rather than speculate, I will say this: early Midleton Very Rare releases from the 1980s are known among collectors and whiskey historians for their richness of pot still character — that distinctive spicy, oily quality that defines the best of Irish single pot still whiskey, softened and lengthened by the grain component in the blend. If this bottle has been well stored, it should deliver a window into a style of Irish blending that predates the modern craft boom by a generation.
The Verdict
At £2,500, you are not simply buying whiskey. You are buying provenance. The Bot.1985 is one of a dwindling number of intact bottles from the second-ever Midleton Very Rare release, and its value is as much historical as it is sensory. That said, this is not a museum piece masquerading as a drink — the Midleton Very Rare programme was built on genuine quality, and the 1985 sits near the beginning of a lineage that has only grown in reputation. For the collector who intends to open it, there is real whiskey here, made by people who understood their craft during a period when getting it right was existential for Irish whiskey as a category. An 8.3 out of 10 reflects both the significance of the bottle and the expectation of what waits inside — tempered only by the inherent uncertainty of any spirit that has lived this long in glass.
Best Served
If you are going to open a 1985 Midleton Very Rare — and I would argue that great whiskey deserves to be drunk — pour it neat into a tulip glass and let it breathe for a full fifteen minutes before your first sip. No water, no ice. The room should be quiet. This is not a whiskey for a party or a nightcap. It is a whiskey for a evening when you have nowhere else to be, preferably with one other person who understands what they are tasting. A small square of dark chocolate with sea salt on the side, nothing more.
