The Port of Leith Old Fashioned can is a ready-to-serve cocktail from Leith Bond, the blending and bottling arm of Edinburgh’s Port of Leith Distillery. Officially called the Velvet Old Fashioned, it combines the house Table Whisky single grain Scotch with Pedro Ximénez sherry and a small amount of saline, replacing the sugar syrup and bitters of a classic Old Fashioned. It is presented at 32% ABV in a 100ml can with an RRP of £6.50, or £78 for a 12 can pack. It went on sale on 24 July 2026 through the Port of Leith shop and selected retailers, with international shipping available.
What Leith Bond has actually changed
The easy story here is the can. The more interesting one is the recipe.
A classic Old Fashioned is spirit, sugar, bitters and water, stirred over ice. Leith Bond has taken out two of those four components. The sweetness comes from Pedro Ximénez sherry instead of syrup, and there is no bitters listed at all. What is there instead is a small amount of saline, the bartender’s trick of using salt to push perceived sweetness forward and round off any edges.
That makes this a sherry-led Old Fashioned rather than a canned copy of the standard build. Purists can argue about whether a drink without bitters qualifies for the name. The more useful question is whether the substitution works, and on paper it should: PX brings raisin, fig, coffee and chocolate, which covers a lot of the ground that Angostura and demerara syrup normally handle between them.
Vaibhav Sood, head of whisky at Port of Leith, framed the goal as keeping the cocktail’s character while pulling it into the Table Whisky range, and pointed to the toffee, gingerbread and dark chocolate depth the sherry pairing gives.
Velvet Old Fashioned tasting notes
We have not tasted this one yet, so the notes below are the distillery’s own rather than a Daily Whisky verdict. We will update the article once we have a can in hand.
Velvet Old Fashioned tasting notes (as described by the distillery)
Nose: rich toffee, dried fruit sweetness from the Pedro Ximénez
Palate: toffee sweetness, gingerbread spice, dark chocolate
Finish: long, described by the distillery as having “incredible length”
ABV: 32% | Base spirit: Table Whisky single grain Scotch | Sweetening: Pedro Ximénez sherry plus saline | Price: £6.50 (100ml can)
For reference, Table Whisky on its own is bottled at 43% ABV, distilled in Edinburgh, matured in a combination of virgin oak and sherry casks, then blended in Leith. Its own profile runs to vanilla sponge, toffee popcorn, ginger cake and caramel, so the sherry is amplifying a direction the whisky was already heading in rather than dragging it somewhere new.
How to serve it, and why the ice matters
Port of Leith suggests pouring it over ice with an orange peel expressed over the top, or drinking it chilled straight from the can.
One practical note that the label will not tell you. At 32% ABV in a 100ml serve, the can holds roughly 32ml of pure alcohol, which is about what you get from a 60ml pour of 50% bourbon once it has been stirred down with ice. In other words, this is already at finished serving strength, not concentrate. Pour it over one large cube rather than a handful of small ones, or you will dilute a drink that has already been diluted for you.
The orange peel is worth the effort. There is no bitters here to supply aromatic lift, so the citrus oils are doing real work rather than acting as decoration.
Who makes it: Port of Leith Distillery and Leith Bond
Port of Leith Distillery opened to the public in October 2023, a £12 million nine-storey building on Edinburgh’s waterfront and Scotland’s first vertical distillery, where production runs top to bottom through the tower. It was founded by childhood friends Ian Stirling and Paddy Fletcher, the same team behind Lind & Lime Gin.
Its own single malt is still maturing, and the earliest casks are only now approaching the three year legal minimum for Scotch. In the meantime, Leith Bond, the distillery’s warehouse and blending arm, keeps the range moving. The name nods to the bonded warehouses that once made Leith the centre of Scotland’s drinks trade, when sherry casks arrived at the harbour, were emptied into locally made bottles, and were bought up by whisky merchants who discovered what the wood did to their spirit.
The sherry connection is not decorative. Port of Leith buys its casks full rather than empty, working with Bodegas Baron in Sanlúcar de Barrameda, a family bodega founded in 1631, and bottles the wine itself under its Cask Partners range. That is where the Pedro Ximénez in this can comes from. PX is one of the sweetest wines made anywhere, around 210g of sugar per litre, produced from grapes sun-dried on mats until they raisin and concentrate. Using it as the sweetening agent in an Old Fashioned is a fairly obvious move for a company that already has drums of the stuff on site.
This is also the second canned release from Leith Bond in three weeks, following the
Table Whisky can that landed on 3 July. The company has described Table Whisky as the same whisky at the heart of every can and bottle in the range, which reads like a hint that more formats are coming.
Price and availability
The Velvet Old Fashioned costs £6.50 for a single 100ml can, or £78 for a 12 can pack, and it is sold through the Port of Leith online shop and selected retailers from 24 July 2026.
Two things worth flagging. The 12 pack works out at exactly £6.50 a can, so there is no bulk discount, but it does clear the shop’s £75 free shipping threshold, which is where the saving actually sits. And Port of Leith ships internationally from its own shop, so readers in Denmark, Germany, the US and elsewhere can order directly, subject to the usual alcohol import rules for your country.
Our take: is £6.50 a fair price for a canned Old Fashioned?
Judged as a proposition rather than a pour, this is priced honestly.
Build the same drink at home from the parts and you are looking at roughly £2.60 of Table Whisky and about £0.50 of Port of Leith PX, so around £3.10 a serve before you have found an orange or an ice tray. The can carries roughly a 2x premium on ingredients. Order an Old Fashioned in a decent Edinburgh bar and you will pay £12 to £14. The can sits closer to the bar price in convenience and closer to the home price in cost, which is exactly where a ready-to-serve cocktail needs to land to make sense.
Who it is for: anyone who wants a cocktail at a festival, on a train, in a hotel room or on a hill, and anyone curious about what PX does in place of syrup. Also, quietly, a good gateway for people who find neat Scotch hard work.
Who it is not for: anyone who wants Port of Leith’s own single malt, which this is not and will not be for a while yet. Anyone who considers bitters non-negotiable in an Old Fashioned will also find this a different drink to the one they ordered.
We will post proper tasting notes once we have opened one. Until then, at £6.50 the cost of finding out for yourself is about the same as a pint.
Frequently asked questions
What is the Port of Leith Old Fashioned can? It is a ready-to-serve canned cocktail called the Velvet Old Fashioned, released by Leith Bond, the blending and bottling arm of Edinburgh’s Port of Leith Distillery. It blends Table Whisky single grain Scotch with Pedro Ximénez sherry and a small amount of saline, and launched on 24 July 2026.
How much does the Velvet Old Fashioned cost? A single 100ml can has an RRP of £6.50, roughly US$8.50. A 12 can pack costs £78 direct from the Port of Leith shop, which is the same price per can but clears the shop’s £75 free shipping threshold. Prices at third party retailers may vary.
What does the Velvet Old Fashioned taste like? According to the distillery, it leads with rich toffee sweetness, moving into gingerbread spice and dark chocolate, with a notably long finish. Those darker notes come from the Pedro Ximénez sherry, which replaces the sugar syrup and bitters used in a conventional Old Fashioned.
Does the Velvet Old Fashioned contain bitters? No. Leith Bond has built the drink from Table Whisky, Pedro Ximénez sherry and a touch of saline, with the sherry supplying both sweetness and aromatic depth in place of sugar and bitters. That makes it a sherry-led interpretation rather than a canned version of the classic build.
Where can I buy the Port of Leith Old Fashioned can? It is available from the Port of Leith Distillery online shop, the distillery shop in Edinburgh and selected retailers from 24 July 2026. The distillery ships internationally, so buyers outside the UK can order online, subject to local alcohol import and delivery rules.
What is Port of Leith Distillery known for? Port of Leith is Scotland’s first vertical distillery, a nine-storey site opened in Edinburgh in October 2023 by the team behind Lind & Lime Gin. Its own single malt is still maturing, so it is currently known for its Leith Bond bottlings, its Cask Partners sherries and Table Whisky.
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