Let’s begin with a thought experiment. Imagine standing on a slate bluff at the edge of the known world—or at least the furthest northmost coastal crag of the Scottish mainland—wind blowing sideways, your sense of direction fuzzed by sea mist and salt tang, the outline of a distillery cut against the horizon like something older than language. Now imagine that very setting, that place, distilled—literally—into liquid. This is not metaphor. This is Polaris.
Unveiled by brand owner International Beverage, Old Pulteney Polaris is a 47-year-old single malt that might very well be the purest articulation of “maritime whisky” ever sealed in glass. And that glass, it turns out, has been hand-sculpted by Highland artisans into a vessel resembling a miniature myth—a deep blue bottle housed inside Caithness slate, rimmed with real silver and reclaimed copper from the distillery stills themselves. This is not a collectible. It is a relic.
But only one exists. Polaris is a singular bottling created exclusively for the 2025 Distillers One of One auction, a biennial charity event held this October at Hopetoun House in Edinburgh, where ultra-rare whiskies are traded like old-world treasure maps by collectors, philanthropists, and the mildly obsessed. It’s valued between £26,000 and £40,000, but the real currency here is mythology.
A Liquid Tether to the North Star
Polaris takes its name, of course, from the North Star, which fits neatly into the motif—the most fixed, unflinching point in the night sky, a beacon for navigation, just as this whisky anchors Old Pulteney’s two-century story. That 200-year milestone hits in 2026, and Polaris is effectively the overture to a celebratory crescendo of new releases planned to mark the occasion.
This isn’t Old Pulteney’s first rodeo at the Distillers One of One auction. Their 2023 entry, Bow Wave, raised nearly £70,000 for the Youth Action Fund, a Scottish charity helping young people across the country. But Polaris is different. It’s older. Wilder. More intimate.
The Whisky Itself: Waxy, Salted, Temporal
Distilled at the Pulteney Distillery in Wick, a coastal town synonymous with hardship, fishing fleets, and liquid alchemy, Polaris was aged 40 years in American oak, then finished for seven more in a first-fill Spanish oak butt. It emerges as a 43.6% ABV symphony of salt and silk.
Renowned whisky critic Dave Broom describes it as “a captivating nose of stone fruits and citrus zest… lifted by the sensation of a cool seashore breeze.” That breeze is a recurring character in Pulteney’s story—the ever-present, half-violent sea air that literally shapes the distillery’s barrels over time. On the palate: “soft, late-harvest fruit with cedar-spiced tannins… a splash of water brings incense spice and mineral depth.”
And if Broom is your esoteric lexicon, then whisky writer Jonny McCormick offers the edible version: “molasses cake, nutmeg, baked apple, cherry cake, espresso foam, grilled pineapple.” The finish? “Dark chocolate and coffee with soft oak and a lift of white chocolate and nutmeg.” Think: your grandmother’s pantry collided with Poseidon’s spice rack.
The Bottle: Crashing Glass, Cliffs, Copper
The vessel, created in collaboration with Glasstorm and other Caithness craftspeople, is arguably more sculpture than bottle. Picture this: a deep blue glass body, incised with rippling patterns to evoke the chaotic calm of the Caithness coast. The front is polished to allow the liquid’s rich mahogany hue to radiate outward like bioluminescence in stormy water.
The slate surrounding it isn’t aesthetic—though it is stunning—but symbolic. It’s the bedrock of the region. And flowing along its base are veins of real Caithness silver, paired with copper threads that once ran hot with the vapor of earlier Pulteney distillations. You are quite literally holding the bones and breath of Wick in your hands.
A Story of Place and People
As Fiona Kennie, Marketing Director at International Beverage, puts it:
“Charity and making a difference in our community is at the heart of our business… This has been a real labour of love for our team and the skilled designers and local makers in Caithness who turned our vision into such a magnificent reality.”
What makes Polaris so affecting—aside from its provenance, age, flavor, and jaw-dropping sculptural bottle—is its sense of total embeddedness. This isn’t a luxury product airlifted into a collector’s vault. It’s terroir in its most elemental, artistic form. Everything—from the barley to the barrel to the copper disc at the bottle’s base—is born of place.
And so Polaris is more than whisky. It is a fixed point in a shifting world, a story told through salted wind and volcanic stone, through sweat and silence and slowness. You don’t drink Polaris. You wait for it. You witness it.
For collectors and connoisseurs lucky enough to be at Hopetoun House this October, Polaris is a once-in-a-lifetime chance to own not just a bottle but an artifact from the northern edge of Scotland, forged in salt and fire and time. It is Old Pulteney’s past and future, suspended in glass.
For more information on Old Pulteney Polaris or to register interest in the auction, visit:
www.oldpulteney.com
www.interbevgroup.com
Distillers One of One Auction
