WK217 Spectrum continued Old Pulteney's habit of naming travel-retail releases after the Wick fishing fleet. The Pulteneytown harbour at the height of the herring boom held something close to a thousand boats, each with its WK registration painted on the bow, and the distillery has used the numbers as a kind of working archive. Spectrum, as the name hints, was built around a wider mix of casks than the leaner Good Hope — the marketing copy at launch pointed to a marriage of bourbon and sherry-seasoned wood designed to give a fuller spread of flavour.
Pulteney's house spirit takes well to a sherry hand. The boil-ball wash still produces a thick, oily new-make that has the body to absorb darker cask influence without losing its coastal signature. Spectrum holds the brine and the wax that mark out a good Pulteney, then layers raisin and orange peel over the top. It is bottled at 46% and presented without chill-filtration, in keeping with the rest of the WK line.
As travel-retail whiskies go, this is the sort of thing that justifies the category: a real distillery character, decently strung, at a price that does not insult anyone. It has never been a cask-strength rarity hunter's bottle and it was never meant to be. What it offers is Pulteney with a bit of Christmas-cake weight added — a useful counterpoint to the brighter house style.
Wick is a long way from anywhere and the distillery has always relied on people coming to find it. The WK bottlings are a small piece of that story, sent out through airports to do the travelling that the town itself cannot.
