Teacher’s Highland Cream is produced in Glasgow and is owned by Beam Suntory. The whiskey brand was registered in 1884 and was founded by William Teacher. The year 1830 in the bottle comes from when William began selling whiskey at his wife’s grocery store. As with the history of so many other whiskey brands, William began making his own blends of malt whiskeys. It was allowed by law in 1856 and, along with his sons, William founded the company Teacher & Sons. William died in 1876, but his sons continued the business. They also set up an Ardmore distillery, from which Highland Cream’s raw material still comes. Teachers & Sons also set up a Glendronach distillery to ensure adequate production volumes as sales increased. Teacher’s & Sons was sold in 1976 and, after several changes of ownership, ended up in 2014 with Beam Suntory.

Teacher’s Highland Cream is a colored, cold-filtered, non-age-rated blended whiskey. In the old days, the blend contained 45% malt whiskey and 55% grain whiskey, today the proportion of malt whiskey has been reduced. The product on sale today consists of more than 30 different malt and grain whiskeys. The 50cl bottle cost € 9.90 in Latvia.

The nose has honey, malt, a little fruit, spiciness and peaty smokiness. The taste is quite spicy and strong. It has a sense of pepperiness and herbiness, as well as a little sweet pear or other fruit. The taste is actually quite varied and has a lot of different nuances. The aftertaste is sweet and only later comes a little peaty smoky that stays on the tongue for a long time.

Adding a bit of water makes the flavor more creamier and it adds more fruity flavors. With a small added water, Teachers is clearly more enjoyable, when in neat it has a fairly sharp and hard bite of alcohol. Teacher’s is clearly better and more versatile than most other blended whiskeys in the same price range.

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