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“Same base?”

“Different runs.”

Olivia worked through the three glasses without hurrying. The first was good but vanished too quickly. The second leaned too hard into smoke and lost the mineral edge. The third made her sit forward.

“The third one.”

Malcolm did the same. “How close?”

Olivia smelled it again, then tasted. “Honey, toasted grain, orchard fruit, restrained smoke, that mineral edge you described.” She waited for the finish. “And then it falls apart.”

Fiona exhaled.

“The finish is too short,” Olivia said. “You have most of the pieces. They just aren’t holding together.”

“That’s exactly the problem,” Malcolm said. “Every version misses in a different place.”

“You sent me a few documents, but what else do the historical accounts actually say?”

Fiona reached for a folder.

“Enough to bloody torment us.”

The records had been copied from originals held in several collections, along with documents found during the restoration. There were letters, merchant accounts, estate papers, excise reports, and references scattered through diaries written by people who’d considered punctuation an unnecessary luxury.

Olivia read while Fiona talked.

The whisky made at Glenbrae in the late eighteenth century had attracted enough attention that people had written about it long before anyone thought future distillers might care how it had been made.

One traveler described sweetness like heather and honey. Another mentioned baked apple and grain. A merchant wrote about smoke that remained after the spirit was swallowed.

An excise officer complained that whisky made illegally in the district was superior to much of the legal spirit being sold elsewhere. Olivia smiled at that one.

“Tell me about 1786.”

“That’s the year that keeps appearing. Orders increased. Several letters mention the quality. Then the records become patchy.”

“Lost?”

“Destroyed or simply never existed.”

Olivia looked at the papers covering the table. People assumed the past kept records because the present wanted answers. Usually the past had been too busy living to write everything down.

Olivia skimmed the reconstruction notes while Malcolm summarized the obvious things they had already tried. The water source, heritage barley, peat, longer fermentation, casks, still shape, and various seasonal runs.

Then one line in the records snagged her attention.

“What about the water after a heavy rain?”

Malcolm frowned. “We’ve tested the water throughout the year.”

“That isn’t quite the same thing.”

She wasn’t here to give them answers they already had.

They went through the remaining reconstruction notes until Fiona finally insisted Olivia eat something.

Lunch turned out to be vegetable soup, thick bread with butter, and shortbread from a tin Fiona claimed she kept for visitors but guarded suspiciously when Malcolm reached for a second piece.