OTTAWA -- The House of Commons has a new official scotch -- bottles of which are popping up around official Ottawa this month at annual end-of-the-political season receptions.

The new Speaker's Select Scotch Whisky, chosen by Speaker Geoff Regan with the help of a panel of taste-testing MPs, is a 12-year-old Aberlour Highland single malt. A 750-ml bottle of the stuff at Ontario's liquor stores costs about $65.

The distiller has put a special label on bottles available only for the Speaker's use at official functions or for purchase by Parliamentarians looking for a unique gift. Parliamentarians, for what it's worth, have to pay $75 for a bottle.

Campbell's Distillers Ltd. was founded in 1826 in Aberlour, Banffshire -- in Scotland's north between Inverness and Aberdeen. The whisky is described as: "medium amber; the palate shows persistence and good intensity of apricots, caramel, spice, ginger, cinnamon, vanilla and toast completed by a long, warm finish."

The tradition of selecting a Speaker's whisky began in 2003 when Peter Milliken, a Kingston MP who was then in the midst of his term as Canada's longest-serving Speaker, decided to borrow the practice established by the Speaker of the British House of Commons.

Between 2003 and his retirement in 2011, Milliken named two whiskies: A Tallisker and a Dalwhinnie.

The last Speaker, Conservative MP Andrew Scheer of Regina, chose a Glenmorangie.

The panel of MPs that helped Regan, a Nova Scotia MP, select his special scotch did so after this year's Burns Supper, the Scottish celebration of poet Robert Burns held every January 25. MPs and senators in kilts have been gathering on Parliament Hill for a Burns Supper likely going back to our Glasgow-born first prime minister, Sir John A. Macdonald.