#39.2 The Highlander Trip

In the footsteps of the Angel’s Share

TL; DR: A classic highlander both in terms of malt produced (fruity and honeyed) and appearance: it definitely looks like a Scottish whisky distillery a very good AI algorithm would draw.

(missed Part 1?)

The bus picked us up at the Dornoch Whisky shop. It was a 20-seater, more than enough for the 15 of us. During the wee ride on the wee bus we had a wee lunch (ok, we’re stopping it…), sandwiches prepared earlier in the van, complemented by our pal John’s homemade Scottish tablet, which he’d prepared using local malts, as usual. The drive to Balblair (yes, that’s where we were headed!) was quite uneventful in the gloomy day, a very Scottish rain was falling over us. To be honest, we didn’t expect anything different when deciding to visit the Highlands in November.

Yes, it was raining a lot…

As we approached Balblair it was pishing doon! The distillery is very picturesque: typical Highlands’ barren hills on the background, it is a combination of low dark buildings (including many warehouses) with a tall red chimney emerging in the middle. In the parking lot there is a shiny copper still behind a row of black barrels with the distillery’s name written on. The distillery was chosen to feature in the movie The Angel’s Share, by Ken Loach. They shot here some of the scenes during the auction of a rare whisky cask from Malt Mill, with Charles McLean playing himself, under a different name of course (for the records, others scenes were filmed in the warehouse of the distillery we visited most times…can you guess which? Here the link in case you want the answer). Although the movie probably isn’t the best among Loach’s filmography, for once it’s one a bit less depressing, and genuinely funny at times.

The real distillery…

…and an AI rendition. Close enough?

The Balblair distillery was built in 1790, one of the oldest in Scotland, and is now owned by Inverhouse (together with Speyburn, Pultney, Knocdhu/Ancnoc and Balmenach), whose parent company (ThaiBev) also owns the wicked Hong Thong ‘whisky’ (which btw we bought during a boring evening in Thailand years ago, such a mistake!). Despite not being new, this is not a brand we were very familiar with. Before our visit, we’d only tried two core expressions (12 and maybe 15), a 10y Gordon&MacPhail Gianluigi’s parents bought during a 2015 family trip in Scotland (just about a year before the whisky bug bit us), one from the Scotch Malt Whisky Society and the one we’d bought that same morning from Thompson Brothers. Overall not many, and we tried them at very different times, which is not ideal to form an opinion on the distillery character. Also, because we got into whisky in the last 5-6 years only, we missed the period when Balblair used to have a vintage core range instead of an age-stated one, so we are alien to the debate on which was better.

The visitor centre looked recently renewed, nice and tidy, with a low ceiling and dimmed lights. There were a few bottlings (unfortunately mostly overpriced) and some branded merchandise on display, with the counter on the right, and the tasting room and toilettes on the left. Gianluigi remembers this last detail, as he lingered a bit so when he got to the tasting room everyone was waiting for him….Ooops. The guide for the day was Nigel, who turned out to be a competent guide when replying to all the numerous questions (kudos). However, we felt that at times he was pushing it too much, providing some unsolicited political opinions. After a brief introductory video, we moved to production, where we couldn’t take pictures, sadly.

Where the malt waits to be milled.

They source barley from the area (40 miles radius), which for the current production of 1.5 million litres of pure alcohol per year is not trivial (full capacity is a little higher, 1.8mlpa). Their water source is located 4-5 miles away, near the hills. Compared to other distilleries, they aim for a higher percentage of husk in the milling process, 30% instead of the usual 20%, with less grist (60% compared to 70%) and the usual share of flour (10%). They are equipped with a semi-Lauter mashtun (three waters), from which they get an unfiltered cloudy wort, and 6 Oregon pine washbacks of 23,000-litre capacity. They usually fill the washbacks with 9,000 litres of wort only, and fermentation lasts around 60 hours.

They have a pair of shiny copper stills, and until the 70s they used to have wormtubs, then replaced by tube-and-shell condensers. A laser system checks when to take the cut from the spirit still, between 69% abv and 59.9%. In our understanding, most of the production is sent to Chivas in tankers. They used to keep about 10% on site, but now more given the success of their single malt (and of single malt in general) they increased the share. The newmake is filled into casks (mostly barrels) at 68% (which considering their cut, seems high).

As the production tour ended, we moved back into the visitor centre for the tasting, and to avoid the even heavier rain. The line-up consisted of 4 drams, 3 from the core range plus the distillery bottle-your-own. It was a solid line-up: only the 12y (ex-bourbon cask only) to many of us seemed a bit bland, although well priced. Both the 15y and 18y (both finished in sherry casks) were very good, as well as the very juicy (and buttery, toffee, honeyd) distillery bottle-your-own, just a shame for the prices (the 15y just below £100, the latter two well north of it).

Tasting with friends!

Slainte!

Overall, it was a nice distillery visit, quite standard, and the tasting was a nice overview on Balblair whisky style, which definitely helped us put it finally on the map, flavour-wise.

Stay tuned to hear more about this whisky day, and until next week, Slainte!

Balblair Signature Tour

Price: £45.00 pp (November 2023)

Duration: 1hr 30min

Tasting: 4 drams, Balblair 12y, 15y and 18y, plus the distillery exclusive bottle-your-own (see below)

Target: everyone

Value for money: Ok

Distillery Exclusive: vintage 2007(~15y), ex-bourbon barrel, 51.6%, cask #422 (£130.00)

Highlights: the picturesque location and buildings

Recommended: the distillery is beautiful, but there might be better value-for-money tours not far away

Link: https://www.balblair.com/

#39.1 The Highlander Trip

A craft distillery in the castle backyard

TL; DR: After visiting Campbeltown and Speyside, this time the Edinburgh Whisky Group travelled to the Highlands, main base Dornoch. No better way to kick off the trip with a visit to the local distillery!

During the 2020 and 2021 lockdowns, one thing that helped us maintain some sort of mental health was the great whisky community we found online, and in particular the Edinburgh Whisky Group founded by Justine on Facebook. A hard core of us kept in touch even after things eased off, and towards the end of 2021, when travels were allowed again and distilleries slowly reopened, we organised a trip all together, the Campbeltown Jolly! It was a success, so we repeated it about a year later with the Speycation.

For the third year, in 2023, after some thinking and discarding some options like a day trip in Pitlochry (Edradour still closed and too many of us had already visited Blair Athol) and a weekend on Islay (too complicated and probably expensive), the selected destination was the Highlands, with the brilliant name Highlander, who wants to dram forever? (our pal Charlie even made a logo to print on t-shirts). We were going to be based in Dornoch, and the trip combined distillery visits, whisky tastings, and a very fun whisky-themed quiz (Charlie was on top of this too!).

On our way to Dornoch we took the chance to visit two Speyisde distilleries (Ballindalloch and Dunphail, both definitely worth a visit!), but then we met up with the rest of the troops directly in Dornoch. For us one big issue was the lack of an open campsite in Dornoch or in the vicinity (we had to contact Visit Dornoch to ask where we could park our campervan without causing any trouble). Unfortunately, this is the issue when visiting the Highlands in the off season, as we’d already found earlier in the year when we went to Ardnamurchan in February. On the one hand, it’s really great to be able to appreciate incredible places and landscapes in peace and without the (sometimes) swarm of summer tourists, but on the other hand many services including campsites (despite the easier maintenance) are closed, making it challenging, at times.

Things you can do while in Dornoch – the Historylinks museum.

After a fun evening with the others at the Eagle Hotel (also restaurant and pub), we woke up In the morning not that rested, because of a cold we’d caught a couple of days before the trip: campervan + cold, not a great combination. We had to catch up, however, because it was going to be a long day: not one, not two, but three distillery visits, yay! We fixed ourselves a nice breakfast in the campervan, and it was soon time for the first visit: the very local Dornoch Distillery, founded by the Thompson brothers Phil and Simon in 2016.

Yep, that’s the whole distillery!

At the moment the distillery is just behind the Dornoch Castle Hotel (at the time of writing also property of Phil and Simon, who took it over from their parents), and near the Historylinks museum. It is a shed that used to be a fire station, more or less same size as the Stirling distillery, but without the bar…Intriguing! So small, that we had to divide the group in two, we were in the second shift. When it was our time to go, Phil Thompson let us inside: everything is very carefully placed to give the operators enough space to move.

One of the six wee washbacks.

There are a 300kg stainless steel semi-lauter mashtun, six (!!) wooden fermenter vessels and two beautiful copper pot stills from Portugal (1,000-litre and 600-litre). There is also a 2,000-litre iStill, which is used as the wash container before distillation, or for gin production (here Phil stressed out how long it does take to clean it after gin to avoid any trace of gin going into the newmake spirit for whisky…A care that we wish other craft distillers would have as well!).

Not the classic stills.

At the moment they are using an ancient variety of barley called Marie Otter, which according to them provides less yield but more flavour compared to other varieties because of the higher protein content. Fermentation lasts seven days, with liquid yeast (it used to be brewer’s yeast), and they leave the top open to allow natural yeasts to play their part as well. The stills are electrically heated, although they use steam coils to pre-heat for a more efficient process. Their capacity is a little more than a hogshead (so north of 150-ish liters) per week, and when we were there, the abv at the end of the last distillation’s heart collection was 66.9%.

In case you were still doubting this is a craft operation. It definitely is!

Probably one of the most geeky distillery visits so far, Phil’s knowledge of and passion for whisky making are impressive. His patience is impressive too, we asked so many questions! Overall, it was very interesting to see how their vision of traditional whisky making translated into practice. Also, we were very happy to have had the chance to visit the distillery shed before the big changes ahead. Indeed, the Thompson brothers have been recently granted permission to build a new distillery nearby, which will improve their capacity and include a visitor centre and a shop. This is a very exciting development, and given their flavour-forward thinking in each step of production, we can only imagine what they will be able to do with an improved capacity!

On the way to the shop.

Done with the visit, we moved to the shop, which is about 8 minutes walking north from the distillery. The shop is closed on weekends, and because we were leaving on the Sunday, if we wanted to get something from them now it was the time. We were lucky to find one of the last bottles of their recent Canadian Single Grain matured in in Sherry casks, for a Christmas gift, while for us we bought a “secret” Highland we’d tried before, very delicious in our opinion. The distillery it comes from would have been the next one on this trip.

Stay tuned to hear about it, and until next week, Slainte!

Bespoke Dornoch Distillery Visit
Link: https://www.thompsonbrosdistillers.com/

#38.2 Warming up for the Highlands, in Speyside

The Dunphail Distillery

TL; DR: After visiting Ballindalloch distillery (and an almost random encounter) we drove up almost until Forres, to the Dunphail distillery. We had already visited it during construction, but this time newmake spirit was flowing through their stills!

(missed Part 1?)

We left you last week at Ballindalloch, after a very satisfying visit to this new and very promising distillery. Unfortunately, the nice wee cafe behind the distillery was closed for the season, so we were about to jump back on Mr Vantastic and go look for another place for lunch. As we approached our van, however, a surprise: Post Dram Prat materialised in front of us, with our friend Justine! She’d just popped in at the distillery to browse the shop and for lunch, but for the latter we had to regroup together. We first tried Grantown East former station, but it was closed too, so we ended up in Grantown-on-Spey. There, we had a lovely soup-and-sandwich and a chit-chat at the High Street Merchants, a very nice cafe. Justine then drove to Tomatin to join some other Edinburgh Whisky Group friends, while we had another stop before driving up north: the Dunphail Distillery.

Gianluigi couldn’t wait to visit Dunphail!

If you’ve been following us for a while this name will be familiar, as we already visited it back in October 2022. At that time, however, they were still building it, and Dariusz (founder, master distiller…and builder!) gave us an in-depth preview of his plans. This time around, however, the distillery is fully built and, at the time of visit, they’d been filling casks for just a few weeks! Serendipity.

The distillery is located just off the road connecting Grantown-on-Spey to Forres, almost mid-way. We arrived at the parking mid-afternoon, we just had time for a couple of photos before going in. At the new visitor centre, Mike welcomed us with a coffee (nice touch!) and a good chat. We found out he moved to the area a few years ago, and started working at the distillery earlier in 2023, while things were getting ready to start.

Grogu, the photo bomber.

Similar to other distilleries (many others… the data analyst in us is starting to notice a pattern), the visitor centre and main production buildings used to be barns, while the warehouse (soon to be two) and the malting floor were purposedly built. Yes, the malting floor: a big difference between Dunphail and most new distilleries is that they are malting on site the barley, which they source from the area. At the moment they are using Lauriet and Sassy barley varieties, and the process to bring it from 42% (after steeping) to 5% humidity (after the kiln) lasts about 33 hours. They dry the barley with a combination of air, anthracite…and peat, so to produce both peated and unpeated newmake spirit.

Mike showed us how to turn the barley by hand with a rake, and also made us try it… so hard, a full-body workout for sure! One of the reasons is that the rake is made heavier by a hammer attached at the base of the handle, to make it stay lower on the ground, otherwise it’d unhelpfully pop up on top of the barley. This ‘adjustment’ was made by the staff, as this type of equipment has been out of production since industrial malting started: learning by experience at play!

Someone could get distracted by such beautiful setting…

…but we still listen carefully to Mike’s explanations.

The malt is mashed one ton at the time in a semi-Leuter mashtun (3 waters at different temperatures, as usual), aiming for a clear worth, which is then moved to one of their 12 Douglas Fir washbacks for a long fermentation: 144h (6 days). The distillery is equipped with three stills (remember these?), all same size, two wash stills and one spirit still: all three are directly fired, however to save energy and improve efficiency they are initially warmed up with steam coils. They are aiming for a 200,000 litres-per-annum capacity, which is small but still reasonable production size. In the warehouse (not dunnage, the floor is concrete), we could take a look at the first batch of casks they filled: history in the making!

The first three casks, exciting!

After the production tour we went back to the visitor centre for the tasting, where we (ehm, Teresa) tried the newmake spirit. It seems trivial for a distillery who just started production to at least make you try the newmake spirit. However, in a few instances this didn’t happen, so well played Dunphail! The other drams were all scotch whiskies coming from the Dava Way range, named after the historical 38km trail from Forres to Grantown-on-Spey. They were a 13y Teaninich from a hogshead, probably ex-bourbon, a 12y Caol Ila from a hogshead, and a sublime 28y North British grain whisky from a 1^st fill ex-bourbon barrel. At the visitor centre, other than merchandise, the available Dava Way bottlings were on sale, as well as some Bimber and the Apogee XII pure (blended) malt. They also had many drams to try at the bar!

So much more casks to fill.

Unfortunately to get to Dornoch we had an over 90-minute drive, and the Dunphail visitor centre was closing too, so we left right after the tasting. We arrived to Dornoch just in time for a nice dinner with our friends from the Edinburgh Whisky Group, and another couple of drams of course, ready for the following days adventures!

Visiting Dunphail was a great experience, a really good deep-dive into this new distillery and whisky production from green barley to newmake spirit. It was clear from how the tour was conducted by Mike that it was set up by whisky enthusiasts for whisky enthusiasts, so a must-do detour from the main roads in our opinion. We are looking forward to enjoying their single malt, when ready!

Until next time, slainte!

Dunphail Distillery Experience

Price: £30.00 pp (November 2023)

Duration: 1hr 30min

Tasting: 3 drams for their Dava Way range and the newmake spirit

Target: everyone, but particularly whisky enthusiasts and geeks

Value for money: good

Highlights: the production

Recommended: yes

Link: https://www.dunphaildistillery.com/

#38.1 Warming up for the Highlands, in Speyside

The Ballindalloch Distillery

TL; DR: On our way to the Northern Highlands, we couldn’t help but stop in Speyside for a couple of visits. First off, a distillery we’d driven past several times but yet to visit: Ballindalloch. Bonus, when we visited they’d just released their first few bottlings!

Important things first: happy New Year! We hope you are well rested after the Christmas and New Year holidays, and had plenty of good drams. We absolutely did – our (Italian) Christmas dram was a very tasty Glen Moray 18y (47.3%) grabbed at the airport, while as a last dram of 2023 and first dram of 2024 we chose the delicious Kilchoman 100% Islay 10^th Edition (bottled in 2020, 50%). We are looking forward to another year of tasty drams to share with you, lovely lot!

Back to 2023, one of our last whisky trips was in early November, with the mighty Edinburgh Whisky Group, organised by the mightier Justine from Kask Whisky. After the Campbeltown Jolly (2021) and the Speycation (2022), it was time for the Highlands: Who Wants to Dram Forever? “Highlands” is quite a broad whisky region (both in terms of area and flavour), we chose the North, and we were based in Dornoch. Of course, to get there you need to take the A9 (unless you go for some insane detour), and the A9 does run kind of close to Speyside as well…so why not doing a quick detour on the way there?

A long drive to Ballindalloch, but here we are!

And it goes without saying, we detoured indeedy. We decided to visit two distilleries, both quite new, starting with Ballindalloch. We’d driven past the this distillery many many times during our multiple Speyside holidays, and once we even stopped for lunch at the cafe just behind it. The distillery was founded in 2014 by the Macpherson-Grant family, who owns the entire estate with the castle (where they’ve been living since 1546!), pastures and barley fields. Before becoming a distillery in 2011, the building was a run-down farm originally built in 1848.

At the time of our visit, they offered various tours (now they changed a bit), but the only one available on the day we’d be there (Thursday) was quite pricey (£75pp), as it included old drams from Cragganmore casks (a distillery to which the family is linked). We asked if we could do the simpler (and cheaper, £20pp) tour they were offering on Wednesdays (now it is offered most days), which included a taste of their two distillery-exclusive single malts. To our big surprise they agreed, in our experience (not only in visiting distilleries), this kind of flexibility has been rarely seen: kudos to them! Just FYI, on Thursdays they also offer an in-depth all-day experience for £275, learning from the manager and the staff.

How an old steading can become a beautiful distillery.

The trip there was uneventful, under a grey sky, and fortunately we didn’t find any road closures due to rain along our route. At the distillery, we were welcomed by Evan, who later told us he was already working for the family but in their fishing range and had very recently switched to the distillery for the off-season. Being in an old stead building, the distillery follows a square layout: the side of the visitor centre entrance is occupied by a lounge (where the tasting took place) and offices, while the remainder is mostly for production.

After a brief introduction, we moved to the milling room, equipped with a modern mill. They process about 1 ton of malted barley every day, which after milling is moved to their semi-lauter mashtun, where one mash is done every day from Monday to Friday.

Every piece of equipment is clearly sized to fit into the building: as the latter is a listed building (and thus can’t be reshaped or expanded) and because of the barley provenance, expansion beyond their current production (100,000 litres of alcohol per year) is not under consideration. As a matter of fact, the barley comes from the family estate, which produces about 350 ton/year, just over their requirement for whisky production (a bit over 300), and it is sent away for malting (the only stage not happening at the distillery).

Gianluigi nosing the wash, a tradition 🙂

We kept walking along the buildings, and next we found the four wooden (Oregon pine) washbacks, where fermentation lasts between 92 or 140 hours (fermention over the weekend is longer, of course). Next, right in the corner, the two stills, a 5,000-litre wash-still and a 3,600-litre spirit still, connected to two wormtubs located outside the building, each one with 70m of copper tubes inside. From the second distillation, they take a cut between 75% and 68% abv. They cask everything on site, and the casks are stored in a warehouse in the courtyard. Surprisingly, their (wee) bottling line is on site too!

Creativity at play when space is limited.

Finally, we went back to the lounge/tasting room for our drams. We were lucky as they’d released they first single malts just a few months before, and we could try their second batch of distillery exclusives: both cask strength and single cask, one matured in an ex-bourbon barrel and the other in an ex-sherry butt. They are both approximately 7.5 years of age (see below for more details) and very tasty for their age, not too sweet and with the robust and thick spirit character clearly coming through.

At the shop, they also had their first small batch bottling, called Seven Springs Collection, Edition #1: a vatting of five ex-bourbon casks (1203 bottles in total, cask strength at 60.2%abv). Evan kindly gave us a sip, tasty but a bit up in price (£150.00).

You can guess who’s had drams and who’s driving.

Overall we really liked this distillery. It looks like they paced themselves and took their time to do things, including releasing their first whisky, which was indeed more robust and tastier compared to others from fairly new distilleries. Yes, their bottlings are pricey, but considering the scale of their operation it kind of makes sense…? Hopefully we’ll see a widely available and better priced expression soon.

Ballindalloch Short Tour and Drams

Price: £20.00 pp (November 2023)

Duration: 45min-1hr

Tasting: 2 drams of their new distillery exclusive bottlings

Distillery Exclusives: Single Malt Distillery Exclusive ex-Bourbon barrel (distilled 21/1/2016, bottled 28/8/2023, cask 29/2015, 62.3%abv) and ex-Sherry butt (distilled 3/12/2015, bottled 28/8/2023, cask 600/2015, 62.3%abv), both 50cl at £89.00

Target: everyone

Value for money: very good

Highlights: the distillery layout and building

Recommended: yes

Link: https://www.ballindallochdistillery .com/

#37 Farewell to 2023

A year full of whisky trips… and more!

TL; DR: It’s December, perfect time for some reflections on the year that’s about to end. Another year full of awesome whisky trips, not only in Scotland: 31 distillery visits, of which 27 seen for the first time!

We are quickly approaching the end of the year, so it’s the perfect time to reflect on the year that has been, of course whisky-wise. As we’re writing, we already travelled back to Italy to celebrate Christmas with our families. It’s around 15 degrees Celsius here, so the atmosphere doesn’t quite call for a dram by the fire, but we’ll try to make the best of it anyway, eheh.

Even more than in 2022, this year we felt like the pandemic was a gone memory (despite Covid is still among us, and it will be for long): travels resumed in full force, Edinburgh is busier than ever, and so it was travelling around Scotland. The big novelty in our life was the campervan, Mr Vantastic, which allowed us to travel a bit more on the wild side, without worrying about reserving accommodations (which in the meantime became quite expensive) or planning too much in advance.

Mr Vantastic, yay!

For our summer holidays we went on a big road trip down to Wales, to discover this beautiful country and its whisky scene. Except for a couple of producers, with Penderyn being the main one, the Welsh whisky industry is still in its infancy and mostly populated by craft distillers, but it’s nonetheless promising. While travelling to Wales, we also stopped by a couple of English distilleries – White Peaks stood out, definitely a hidden gem.

A hidden gem in Derbyshire, White Peaks.

Also, we couldn’t help but going to Speyside again, this time for the Spirit of Speyside festival, a different experience (not in a bad way) compared to our beloved Fife Whisky Festival and Whisky Fringe (which we attended this year too). We had great time, and visited a number of distilleries that are usually closed to the public.

A highlight of the Spirit of Speyside.

Mortlach, Linkwood and Dailuaine were fantastic, in spite of the entry price, and so it was Speyburn, but good news: the latter is now open to the public! Now every whisky enthusiast can visit and check out their old drum maltings: a piece of industrial history! We briefly stopped in Speyside again later in the year on our way to the Highlands, to visit a couple of new distilleries: Ballindalloch and Dunphail. The first one had just released their first single malt, while the latter had just filled their first batch of casks…History in the making!

Even Grogu is excited to visit Dunphail!

The Highlands were the destination of the Edinburgh Whisky Group annual trip. In Dornoch, Phil from Thompson Brothers gave us a quick tour of their craft distillery. Then, we visited other local distilleries, two for the first time (Glenmorangie and Balblair), and Clynelish for the second time (blog posts about all this coming soon). This was not the only one we visited for a second time this year. In early February we had a very wet trip to the West Highlands to revisit Ardnamurchan and Tobermory. Moreover, in August we did a Warehouse Tasting at Deanston with a couple of friends from Italy. Gianluigi even went on a solo trip to Campbeltown in December, to use a couple of remaining leave days from work and take advantage of his Cadenhead Club membership by getting a free warehouse tasting: a string of awesome drams, including a spectacular 9y old Staoisha (Bunnahabhain) finished in an ex-Amontillado sherry cask.

Two things we love in one picture.

We did a lot of things, but also missed a few opportunities: first, we wanted to go back to Islay, but we couldn’t make it, too busy with work. Then we missed the Dramathon due to a flood risk in Aberlour (this year we were supposed to run the 10k only), as well as the Roy Aqvavitae Blind Challenge, this time because of a terrible cold we’d caught.

Leaving whisky trips on a side, it seemed to us that the number of tastings happening around Edinburgh has grown exponentially. We had great fun with Justine from Kask Whisky, now doing her monthly tastings at the Lind and Lime gin distillery, conveniently near home. One of the highlights of this year was definitely the Glen Mhor tasting, on the 40^th anniversary of its closing, organised by Jason and Mark/Jolly Toper. Other great ones were the Woodrow’s of Edinburgh tasting at the Palmerston, organised by our pal Murray, and some tastings at Kilderkin and at Bacco Wine.

On the bad side, we noticed the sharp increase in bottle prices. It was interesting to follow a recent vPub from Roy, where he showed that for some products the growth was mostly in line with inflation. However, this was for core/standard releases. We still feel that, instead, some independent bottlers and some producers are “taking the piss”, for a lack of a better term, particularly in relation to single cask and limited releases. Among these, the Scotch Malt Whisky Society bottle prices increased substantially, which resulted in us buying almost zero bottles and going only a few times to the venues compared to previous years. We have to say, though, that food at Queen St is still awesome, and the renovated Vaults look great.

Cask experiment 1.0.

One of the few bottles we bought from the SMWS was for our cask experiment: we got a 1-litre American Oak cask (virgin), which we seasoned with Gutturnio red wine (a typical red wine from Piacenza’s province) for 3 months, and it is now holding a very tasty 12y Dufftown…In 2024 we will find out if it’s turning into pish or is actually drinkable.

After plenty of distillery visits and more than a handful of tastings this year, we’re already planning for next year trips with Mr Vantastic …Islay & Jura? More English distilleries? The Western Hebridies? Back to Speyside? We shall see, but nonetheless, we are already looking forward to it! Now is the time to rest and enjoy some time with our families, hoping that you are doing the same, wherever you are. Possibly, with a good dram in your hand.

Until next year, slainte, and have a great New Year!

#36 The Stirling Distillery

Distilling underneath the castle

TL; DR: Very gloomy Sunday afternoon, we decided for a last-minute distillery visit not far from Edinburgh: the Stirling Distillery. Very close to the Stirling Castle, they distilled only gin until very recently, when they added malt whisky (well, newmake spirit for now) to their portfolio.

Most of our trips (in particularly whisky trips) are carefully planned in advance, mainly because of the popularity of distillery visits nowadays. Of course, we don’t want to risk travelling to a distillery and being told they’re fully booked, it happened once during a non-whisky trip and it was disappointing. Careful planning also helps because Scotland is not the easiest country to travel, with ferries, single track roads, etc…And before we got Mr Vantastic, finding reasonably priced last-minute accommodation was always a challenge.

Sometimes though, we can still sneak in a last-minute whisky trip, and this was the case of today’s story. On a Sunday at the end of October we’d planned to take the van and go somewhere for a walk. However, as usual when we plan outdoor activities, the weather was dire: dark, gloomy, rainy (we should probably just buy waterproof walking gear at this point…). So, instead, we went to a new whisky distillery: the Stirling Distillery!

When the rain brings you to a distillery…

This is one of the newest whisky distilleries in Scotland, and as the name reveals, it’s in Stirling, on the same hill that leads to the magnificent Stirling Castle (one of the most interesting to visit, and where Kings of Scotland stayed until the end of 1500s). Unlike many others, the distillery has not been talked much about in the whisky world, it’s not even mentioned in the very comprehensive Malt Whisky Yearbook 2024, despite the notable feature of starting distilling whisky in the town of Stirling for the first time after more than 170 years. We can think of two possible reasons for this: first, it’s tiny, definitely a craft operation (see later for more details). Second, and more importantly, owners June and Cameron conceived it as a gin distillery in the first place, all the way back in 2015, with the aim to “reflect the Stirlingshire countryside” in their gin, and only very recently they moved to new make spirit.

Outside the distillery…

So there we are, under a dire weather, after an almost-hour drive from Leith. The stone building is very beautiful, we will soon find out that it was called “the Old Smiddy”. Built in 1888, funnily enough it used to be a church temperance hall and a blacksmith. The distillery moved there in 2018, although they also have a warehouse and gin production in the Stirling outskirts. They have two experiences, one dedicated to gin and one to whisky, with the latter being very new as whisky production had only started 2-3 weeks before our visit. They also offer a gin school for £90 (or for £140 for the couple, quite unusual to find such discounts in the Scottish whisky landscape).

The building is very beautiful inside too, with low lights creating a very peaceful atmosphere. On the right side there is the shop, and on the left the bar, offering a variety of beverages (including soft drinks). There is also a mezzanine where we didn’t go, it looked like an office/warehouse space. The guide for the day, Kiran, told us he was mostly into gin and cocktails, and that was one of his first whisky tastings. When all visitors had checked in, we started the tasting, which included four single malts from their independently bottled range called Sons of Scotland (all non-chill filtered, not artificially coloured and bottled at 50%).

The expressions we (well, Teresa) tried are named after historical distilleries near Stirling. The first (*) was the Cambusbarron (batch 3), a 3y Lowlands whisky (vintage 2020) matured in a combination of ex-bourbon and ex-sherry casks. The second dram was the Arngibbon (batch 4), an 8y Speysider (vintage 2015) matured in ex-bourbon casks. Then we tried the Stoneywood 9y, an Orkney whisky (vintage 2014, we still wonder which distillery this was from), finished or fully matured (we didn’t get it) in ex-white wine casks (batch 3). Finally, we tried a previous batch of the Arngibbon (batch 3), a 14y Speysider matured in ex-bourbon and ex-sherry hogsheads (vintage 2008). Overall a nice string of drams, with the Orkney one being definitely the most interesting.

A bad picture of the nice line-up.

After the tasting, Kiran showed us the whisky production, which is entirely happening in a separate part of the building, all in the same relatively small room! They buy malted barley grist (pre-milled), which they mash on site stirring by hand. Then they move it into two fermentation vessels, where it ferments for 4 days (96 hours approximately, they use distiller’s yeast). They finally distill it twice in the same 170-litre copper pot still, a very beautiful Portuguese still, named Flora after June’s mother. The spirit comes out at 70%abv, and it is first put into plastic jugs, only later transferred in casks at the warehouse for maturing. Edit (April 2024): they later installed a second still, to fully comply with the SWA regulations.

At the time they were producing the newmake to fill the casks for their King James Collection: six casks of different type (bourbon, sherry, rum, etc.) which will be released biannually starting in 2027. They also have a cask sale programme, from 55-litre Firkin to 250-litre hogsheads. They aim for a production of 10,000 litres of alcohol per year, which would put them as the smallest distillery in Scotland (currently the smallest are Dornoch and Moffat, with 12,000 litres each).

Some distilleries we visited started gin production as a way to get quick cash (for example Borders, Cotswolds and Holyrood), but they knew from the beginning they mainly wanted to do whisky. Stirling (and others like In the Welsh Wind or Deerness) on the other hand, started with gin, and decided to add whisky along the way. This is definitely reflected in Stirling distillery’s size and equipment, which makes them a truly craft operation. As we couldn’t try their newmake spirit, we cannot really say much more at this stage, but this left us very curious for the future. Hopefully we’ll come back to try it, or try their single malt too.

Until next time, slainte!

Stirling Distillery Whisky Experience

Price: £25.00 pp (October 2023, £12.00 for drivers + £1.85 fee)

Duration: 1hr

Tasting: four drams from their Sons of Scotland independent bottler range, depending on availability (see * for description)

Target: everyone

Value for money: ok

Highlights: the bar and the distilling “shed”

Recommended: if you’re visiting Stirling and have some spare time, definitely, otherwise we’d suggest waiting for their single malt

Link: https://stirlingdistillery.com/

#34 One last stop before home

A new distillery in Moffat

TL; DR: You would think we visited enough distilleries in our summer holidays, but we managed to stick another one in at the last minute, while on the way home. Moffat, one of the newest in the Scottish Borders. Very experimental at this stage, it’ll be very interesting to see how their malt ends up being!

After visiting a couple of English distilleries, and a few more down in Wales, we couldn’t end our holidays without a Scottish one, right? However, this distillery visit was not in the plans until the night before. After leaving Wales we briefly stopped in the cute town of Chester, where we had a half pint in a hidden pub called The Cavern of the Curious Gnome (to get there you need to go the balconies, the Rows, and the pub is above a wine bar that you need to cross).

Afterwards, we drove straight north, while having some sandwiches we’d prepared earlier. We spent the night at a farm-brewery, just before Lancaster, the Farm Brew Co (found on SearchForSites): if you have some pints there, they let you stay…And their beers are delicious, so we had a couple each and bought another few to bring home. While there, we were browsing on our phones, and realised that the Moffat Distillery had just opened to visitors. We’d already heard about them, and Moffat was on our road back to Leith, so why not? We booked right away!

The yummy beers we brought home.

In the morning we left early, unlike the sunny dusk the day before, it was a very cloudy and grey day. We stopped in rainy Carlisle for breakfast and to pay a visit to the House of Malt (they have very good deals sometimes), and then we drove straight to Moffat. The village looked very nice and quiet, like many others in the south of Scotland, with a large central square with shops, restaurants and cafes. The distillery is just outside the village heading south, in a wide clearing just off Old Carlisle Rd.

Unable to cope with the wind at Moffat distillery.

The building is clearly new, a black barn with a glass wall covering all the entrance side. We could see the visitor centre on the right, while on the left we could glimpse at the production area, although we could not see the stills as usually happens with new distilleries. As we entered the building, we realised how everything is new. The main room is very large, at the moment occupied by the visitor centre: a bar in the centre, the bottle shop on the left, some sofas on the right, and a grand piano just behind the bar.

Not so small as a visitor centre!

Alex (the bartender/guide) told us about the company, Dark Sky Spirits, founded in 2017 by Nick and Erin Bullard, focusing on sourced products. The name comes from Moffat being one of the first towns in Europe installing low-impact street lighting to decrease light pollution. A few years later they decided to start a distillery: permission was granted and land was purchased in 2020, ground was broken in 2021 and distilling from 2023, really just started. We soon moved to the production area, where Nick (founder and distiller) talked us through the process. They source the barley (Lauriet variety) in Fife, where it is also malted. The operation is very small at the moment (max capacity only about 12,000 litres per annum of alcohol), as they are in an experimental phase. Experiments include mixing regular and toasted/heavily toasted barley, brewer’s mashing (ie lower temperatures to retain sweetness), fermentation times (now fairly short at 39-42hrs, but planning for longer ones), and spirit cut (eg low wines at 29.5%, much higher than the usual ~20% in most distilleries).

Mashing and fermenting.

Experimenting with barley.

The mash tun and the washbacks are less than 500l (they use American yeast), while the wash and spirit stills are respectively 350 and 60 litres and at the moment, they sit outside in a container. Their main characteristic is that they are wooden fired, a unique feature among Scottish whisky distilleries. They approximately fill one barrel per week, and mainly source barrels from Tennessee.

Can you distill in a container? Yes, you can.

Back inside, we spotted some of their casks in a “temporary warehouse”, and saw where the definitive stills will be in the future – now there is the gin still (200l) and the bottling equipment. Blending and bottling has been the main activity for Dark Sky Spirits, indeed. In 2020 they developed a range called Auld Special Edition, including two blended malts (#2 Spicy 13y, and #3 Fruity 15y, both 48%) and two single malts (#1 Smoky 16y, 47% and recently a 26y from Speyside Distillery, bottled at 45% and distilled in 1997). They also produce the Moffat blended malt (40%, NAS), recently replaced by the Doorhamer (blended malt, 40%, NAS), the Moffat gin and a series of gin liqueurs. Moreover, they bottle expressions for local events, like the Stranraer Oyster Festival or the Moffat Eagle Festival (this year both blended malts at 46%). All their products seem to be reasonably priced (still now, after the August increase in taxation).

Things we tasted.

Finally, we had a taster of their products at the bar (the tasting room was not ready, in our understanding): Moffat blended malt, Moffat gin and some gin liqueurs. However, Alex was nice enough to pour us wee samples of their Smoky and Fruity whiskies, the latter being the winner for us. With that our visit finished, and we slowly drove through the south of Scotland to Leith. This distillery was one of the few that left us with more curiosity than before we entered, honestly. It is going to be very interesting in the coming years to see how this distillery will develop, and in particular to understand how the wooden fire still will affect the whisky, in texture and taste.

Until next time, slainte!

Moffat Distillery Tour

Price: £20.00 pp (July 2023)

Duration: 1hr 15min (on paper, but Nick got carried away and it was actually longer)

Tasting: Moffat gin, the Moffat Blended Malt (40%, NAS, 2536 bottles), and gin liqueurs

Target: tourists and craft distilling geeks

Value for money: ok

Highlights: the wooden fired stills

Recommended: if you’re driving on the A74, a stop won’t hurt 😉

Link: https://www.moffatdistillery.com/

#31.8 Spirit of Speyside 2023

The amber swan: Linkwood

TL;DR: Finally, the last day of the Spirit of Speyside came. After a relaxing morning, we visited another Diageo’s workhorse: Linkwood! Very beautiful distillery, tasty whisky, but the tour with the enthusiastic staff it’s what really gave value to this visit!

(missed Part 7 /Part 6/Part 5/Part 4/Part 3/Part 2/Part 1?)

The last morning of the long weekend was a slow one. We woke up in a rainy and gloomy Dufftown, waiting for one of the coffee shops in town to open. After some coffee and cake, we had some free time, so we finally managed to go to the Whisky & Heritage Centre. It is a little place managed by volunteers where whisky memorabilia are on display, plus old pictures and documents that can be checked out. We had a lovely chat with the lady taking care of it, finding out they have plans to increase the size of the centre, and we got a couple of second-hand whisky books for a small donation.

Black Bottle on tap.

We went to the Dufftown Whisky Shop, as they had scheduled a Benriach pop-up tasting. We tried a couple of their new range (which we are not too familiar with, since we visited the distillery before the core range revamp) and had a chat about it and other Brown-Foreman products with the brand ambassador. He told us that some news was in sight about Glenglassaugh, so we hoped for a reopening of the visitor centre. A few weeks later they revamped the line-up (with a 12y bottled at 45% and two NAS at higher abv), but as we are writing their website has disappeared, so…still hoping!

Left the shop, and Dufftown, we drove to Aberlour to…another shop, this time the Speyside Whisky Shop, for another chat with Matteo and a dram (at the time some saught-after bottles were open so people could purchase by the dram). This was followed by a quick lunch at the usual Gather’n Cafè nearby (we should have taken a punch card long ago!). It was soon time to leave though, direction Elgin, for the next and last distillery visit of the holiday: Linkwood! The road wasn’t very trafficked and the drive was smooth, so we arrived there a few minutes early.

Once again, we were not ready for the picture.

There, we met our friend John from the Edinburgh Whisky Group, and we were welcomed by Paul, the distillery manager. The welcome cocktail was the usual Old-Fashioned, of course made with their own flagship whisky. Hovwere, it feels odd talking about a flagship, since Linkwood 12, part of the Flora and Fauna range, is the only bottling from this distillery (similar to many other Diageo’s distilleries).

The original Linkwood distillery was founded in 1821 by the Brown family, and started production a few years later. It was sold in the 1930s to Scottish Malt Distillers, which in turn were acquired by United Distillers (a precursor of Diageo). In 1970-71 a new distillery was built, and in spite of that, the old one continued production until the site was mothballed. The old distillery was demolished only in 2012, with all the equipment moved to the new one, which was expanded.

The old buildings.

Our knowledge of Linkwood dates back a few years, to our first (and only) bottle of Johnnie Walker Green Label 15y, as this is one of the malts featuring in this blended malt, together with Caol Ila, Talisker and the fellow Speysider Cragganmore. Since then, we tried a few different Linkwood expressions thanks to independent bottlers, mostly the Scotch Malt Whisky Society. Recently, we had a great one, finished in Tokaj wine cask, from the new independent bottler Fragrant Drops: a sweet dram with a hint of grassiness, which is the main character the distillery aims to get.

The tour was conducted by Barry and Eilidh, both distillery operators. Near the entrance of the production building, they showed us a small cask that was used back in the day by distillery workers to get their daily dram (or drams, in the past we’ve been told by some guide that usually they were 3 a day). As many other distilleries, they have a Porteus Mill, painted in dark red, but unlike many the proportion of husk/grit/flour is 10/80/10, and they use Lauriet barley. Here the tour became very interesting: they only do two waters during mashing (they call it “continuous sparging”), and we were shown a cylinder they use to check the wort cloudiness. This is one of the nerdy things we discovered fairly recently, depending on the desired newmake character, when mashing the wort could be more or less filtered. The less filtered mashes (thus, cloudy) give a nuttier character to the newmake. On the contrary, a clearer wort results in more fruity and grassy notes, like Linkwood indeed.

The fermentation in their 5 wooden washbacks from the 70s (and also other 6 installed in 2013) lasts 75 hours. Finally, we went to the still room, where three pairs of very large stills (with straight-ish lyne arms) operate independently. The shell-and-tube condensers are equipped with “turbulators”, to slow down the water. After the still room, we had a stroll outside around the famous lake, where we saw the swans that inspired the famous label. The water is mainly there as a reserve, used in case of emergency. From there, we could check out the old malting floor (and the pagoda roof), now a warehouse. Unfortunately, no tour inside there.

Overview of the still room…

…and an interesting detail.

Back to the office, Paul and Scott, another distillery operator, were ready to host the 3-dram tasting: Linkwood 12 (43%abv, one of the best drams from the Flora and Fauna range, in our opinion), Johnnie Walker Green Label 15 (43%), nice to revisit it after some time, and finally a Linkwood cask-sample (similarly to the one at Dailuaine, not on sale and only served at Cardhu distillery in one of their fancy tours). Really a great dram, for sure in our top 5 of the festival. A shame these cask sample bottles were not available for purchase, although knowing Diageo’s pricing policies they would have probably been out of reach.

The tasting.

On the tour there was a group not very happy about that, so they started rudely complaining with the staff about the missing opportunity to buy the cask-sample bottles, showing their cluelessness on how a big multinational company like Diageo works (not that we know much better, but enough to understand that some decisions are not down to the distillery staff). Oh well.

Happy for the great festival experience!

Anyway, one of the things we liked the most of this first time at the Spirit of Speyside was to get to know and talk to people working in distilleries, in particular the ones not usually open to public: the staff friendliness, but more importantly their eagerness to show us around and make us understand their work were amazing. Seeing how passionate they are was really refreshing, in spite of all the cynicism of their mother companies, and in the whisky world in general nowadays. Of course, we don’t want to play down any of the people we met in distilleries usually open to public, however in our many trips sometimes we experienced too edulcorated, almost scripted tours, and a couple of times we were even treated with complacency. And this is fine (well, except for the last…), it would be silly to expect that every tour is mind-blowing, and that every tour guide is a whisky nerd: at the end of the day, it’s a job as any other. But we cannot help but noticing a certain difference when the tour is done by an operator, like in many cases during this trip. And just for it, we were grateful.

Until next time, slainte!

The Linkwood Distillery Tour

Price: £80.00 pp (May 2023)

Duration: 2hr

Tasting: welcome cocktail and 3 drams – Linkwood 10 (43%), Johnnie Walker 15 Green Label (43%), Linkwood cask sample from ex-bourbon (53.4%)

Target: whisky enthusiasts

Value for money: not great

Highlights: the enthusiastic distillery staff

Recommended: not at this price

Link: https://www.spiritofspeyside.com/

#31.7 Spirit of Speyside 2023

Speyburn uncovered!

TL;DR: Another visit to a (then…) closed-to-public distillery: Speyburn. In 125 years it was open for the first time during the 2023 Spirit of Speyside. A great visit, their own old drum maltings were a highlight, a jump back in time!

(missed Part 6/Part 5/Part 4/Part 3/Part 2/Part 1?)

From Dufftown to Rothes it’s barely a 15-minute drive, so we could take it easy and stop for a coffee and a soup, to warm up in the cold and rainy day. We then soon arrived at the Speyburn parking lot: in spite of being hidden from the main road, we knew exactly where to go, as during one of the many trips to Speyside we drove on the road just in front, from where the distillery could be admired in all its beauty.

Speyburn is not among the most well-known single malts, although it can now count on the presence on some supermarket shelves (the Bradan Orach and the 10y). They are owned by Inver House (which is in turn owned by Thai Bev, guess where they’re from…) together with other four single malt distilleries, two in the Northern Highlands (Pultney and Balblair), another in Speyside (Balmenach) and Knockdhu (producing the AnCnoc whisky) in the Eastern Highlands. We previously only had one bottle of Speyburn, from the Scotch Malt Whisky Society: a 9y old from a refill bourbon. We got it by chance when buying a pack of three bottles during the pandemic, with the Speyburn being the one we were less excited about: it ended up being the best of the trio! Spicy at first, with time in an opened bottle the oxidation played its part, and the whisky mellowed down and became a fruity deliciousness. At this point, it goes without saying we were very curious to know more about Speyburn!

Beautiful despite the clouds.

As we parked, we were warmly welcomed by the distillery manager Euan and the global ambassador Stuart (who we knew from some Aqvavitae’s vPubs), who walked us to the visitor centre to check in. Compared to the other “usually closed to public” distilleries, they seemed to be way more prepared: there was a proper shop (not just a pop-up like at Dailuaine and Mortlach), with bottles and merchandising displayed on the shelves, and also a brand-new bar with big tables, where the tasting would have taken place after the visit inside the production. We’ll come back on this point.

The tour started with some history in the courtyard: the distillery was founded in 1897, and the architect was the famous Charles Doig, who brought the pagoda roofs into the game. This became one of the iconic features of Scotch whisky distilleries, to the extent that distillers in other countries started copying it. It is also on the road signs in Speyside and elsewhere: if you see a white pagoda on a brown background, there must be a distillery close by! The original function was the kiln’s ventilator, as at the time most distilleries were malting their own barley, Speyburn included. A crucial difference, however, early on they installed one of the few on-site drum maltings. They haven’t been used in almost 60 years (after a sudden stop in 1967 following the stop of the near railway the year before), but they are still preserved for nerdy visitors to admire. And in fact, the first part of the tour was dedicated to this unique feature of the distillery.

Time travelling part 1: the malting floor.

Time travelling part 2: the steeping tanks.

Time travelling part 3: the drum maltings.

Euan and Stuart explained us that the place has been made accessible only recently, as testified by the new woodwork to allow people inside: it was like taking a walk in the past. The malting was working on different floors, the top one was where the barley was laid out, steeping tanks at the middle one, while the drums (think of huge tumble driers…kind of) on the ground floor. One thing we found interesting was the completely different story compared to the usual one: smaller on-site drum maltings, and similarly Saladin boxes, were intermediate stages between the two extremes that are usually talked about during distillery visits (and on blogs, etc.), the (highly romanticised) labour intensive and not so efficient malting floor, and the modern highly efficient industrial-scale maltings. So fascinating to see what was in between!

We jumped back to the present, moving to the mill room, and from there through the usual layout of the modern plant: the closed stainless-steel mashtun, and the wooden washbacks, where we could sip a bit of their semi-cloudy 72hr-fermented wash (always an experience). One interesting feature is the combination of both shell-and-tube, of which one is horizontal, and two wormtubs condensers (132m in total). The former condenses liquid from the wash still, while the latter two from the spirit-stills, from which they take a cut between 72 and 64% abv. With only 3 stills they manage to produce about four millions of litres of alcohol per year: they get this incredible volume by working 24/7. There is a catwalk on the wormtubs, which are located outside, where we spent a couple of minutes….we wonder if in Speyside the weather gets warm enough to tempt some people to jump in them.

The still and us, the classic picture.

We soon checked out the warehouse, where a surprise was waiting for us: nope, unfortunately we didn’t sample some casks (we were hopeful, considering the hefty 80 quid tickets), but it was almost as good: we had a sample of their 125^th Anniversary release, a single cask bottling from a 2^nd fill ex-bourbon barrel vintage 2007, similar in style to the one we had but much more balanced, tropical and creamy. A truly delicious dram, probably the best one we tried during the festival.

The warehouse.

The last part of the experience was the tasting of their core range, back at the bar. We had four generous drams of their non-age statement (NAS, but they told us it should be about 7-8y) expression Bradan Orach (40%abv, refill ex-bourbon), the 10y (again kind of introductory, 40%, 90% ex-bourbon and 10% ex-sherry casks, mostly second fill), but finally the two gems: the 15y (ex-bourbon before a 2-3y finish in ex-sherry Miguel Martinez casks) and the 18y (14y in ex-bourbon casks, then 4y in second fill oloroso casks), both 46%, natural colour and not chill-filtered. They were both super tasty: Gianluigi preferred the former, Teresa (as most people on the tour) the latter.

You can’t really tell from this picture how nice the bar is…

At this point you’ll be wondering: wait a minute, if they are only open occasionally, how come they have a bar for tastings and a nice shop? Well, as a matter of fact, before the festival we’ve been told by a birdie that Speyburn might have been preparing to open to visitors permanently. At the Spirit of Speyside 2023 they won the award as “best new experience” and this might have given the company the nudge to open permanently (although, more realistically it was already planned and not depending on the award…). Bottom line is that, good news: starting August 2023 (coincidentally the time of writing), you can visit them and go check their very fascinating old drum maltings for the very reasonable price of £20 (see the link below).

So, overall, it was a great visit (one we’d do again), and as we said earlier, a true deep-dive into the history of whisky production in Speyside. A bit pricey maybe, but at least the tasting was generous (5 healthy drams and a taste of the newmake), unlike some other we visited for the same price.

Guess who was the designated driver…

For the evening we drove first to Aberlour for a chit-chat with Matteo at the Speyside Whisky Shop (from which he just moved on as we are writing), and then to Dufftown where we spent the night. We parked near the Mortlach Hall, which was super quiet. We had dinner at the Commercial Hotel, which has moved the restaurant to the former function hall, together with some tasty Three Ships South-African malts (produced at the James Sedgwick Distillery), very rare to find in Scotland. Not that we were bored of Speyside malts, but it was good to try something different! Slainte!

The Speybirn Distillery Tour (Spirit of Speyside)

Price: £80.00 pp (April 2023, but now – August 2023 – they’re open to the public and it’s £20.00)

Duration: 2hr

Tasting: 5 drams, Speyburn 125^th Anniversary (vintage 2007, 15y, refill ex-bourbon barrel, 62.6%, NC, NCF), Bradan Orach (40%), 10y (40%), 15y (46%, NC, NCF) and 18y (46%, NC, NCF)

Target: whisky enthusiasts

Value for money: not great

Highlights: the old drum malting equipment

Recommended: better than others, but still hard to justify at this price

Links: https://www.speyburn.com/, https://www.spiritofspeyside.com/

#31.6 Spirit of Speyside 2023

The beast of Dufftown: Mortlach

TL;DR: our fourth day at the festival started with a classic, a distillery particularly known for their complex distillation process: Mortlach. The visit was very interesting indeed, and the distillery manager Kirstie didn’t shy away from nerdy details.

(missed Part 5/Part 4/Part 3/Part 2/Part 1?)

On Sunday morning the sky was still overcast, it would start raining later in the day eventually. Oh well. After breakfast we wrapped up all our stuff: it was the last night in the camping, the following and last night of the holiday we would wild camp again, although we hadn’t figured out where yet. We left the camping driving towards Dufftown, in a backroad that goes past the back of the Speyside Cooperage, from which you can admire their casks pyramids. Being Sunday morning, Dufftown was very quiet, and not all cafes were open yet. We managed to park on the main road, in front of the local CoOp, and tried hunting for a coffee. After finding one, we walked our way towards our first appointment of the day: Mortlach distillery, the so-called beast of Dufftown.

Where are we?

It is a very old one, founded in 1823 after the Excise Act, and it was the only one in town until their manager at the time, William Grant, left to found Glenfiddich. In 1897 the distillery was expanded, and thanks to the work of the famous architect Charles Doig, the pagoda roofs were added. It was acquired by John Walker & Sons in 1923, but the company soon merged with Distillers Company Limited in 1925 (then United Distillers in 1987, Diageo from 1997). Before 2014, the only official bottling of Mortlach was the 16y “Flora and Fauna”, now discontinued and dearly celebrated (like most things of the past, the abuse of “’member-berries” is widespread in whisky-land…if you don’t know the reference, check South Park season 20).

The beast of Dufftown under a gloomy sky.

A core range was introduced in 2014 (with some controversial 50cl bottles) and revamped in 2018, while the current age-stated range includes a 12y (Wee Witchie), a 16y (Distiller’s Dram), a 20y (Cowie’s Blue Seal) and a 14y travel retail (Alexander’s Way), plus the occasional Special Releases. The newmake spirit is mainly filled in ex-sherry casks, although you can find some independently bottled ex-bourbon matured expressions (we have an 11y from Signatory Vintage, a marriage of 2 ex-bourbon hogsheads, which is quite tasty). Mortlach whisky is quite famous to be meaty, and thus considered a malt for seasoned drinkers. Fun fact, the 16y (very decent in our opinion) worked quite well every time we’ve given it to friends (both beginners and casual whisky drinkers).

At the distillery we were given a welcome cocktail, a Mortlach-based Old Fashioned (this time with regular angostura, not the orange one like at Dailuaine), and the distillery manager, Kirstie, introduced herself. She’s a graduate form the Brewing and Distilling Master at Herriot-Watt University, and of course extremely knowledgeable: her explanations definitely gave value to quite a pricey experience. We also bumped into a couple of barflies at the tour, Angus and Graham, met back in November at the Aqvavitae’s Blind Challenge in Glasgow.

The shiny mashtun…

After the introduction, we started the proper tour: we moved outside in the courtyard, and then near the milling room, which hosts an old red Porteus mill. A notable difference was that they take a smaller cut of flour in their grist (8%) compared to other distilleries (usually 10%). In our understanding, one of the reasons is that their water to grist ratio is higher, 3.8 instead of 3.6. The mashtun looks very new, made of stainless steel and closed, with the usual window to check its inside. They only have two water runs instead of three, with the second being warmed up to get the sugars that are usually obtained in the third run (lasting 6.57 hours in total).

…and the beautiful wooden washbacks.

The walls of the fermentation room, where six Douglas Fir washbacks are located (wooden because of a combination of aesthetics and convenience, since they can be disassembled unlike stainless-steel ones, all replaced in 2016), are decorated with some nerdy facts about whisky making, like the formula to calculate the % abv of the wash using the gravity readings, and the graph showing the trends of different types of sugars digestion during fermentation. Their fermentation time is usually between 55 and 59 hours, never less than 50, and they work with yeast that can survive higher temperatures, around 35C.

Knowledge pill on the wall # 1.

We then moved to the still room with its 6 stills (3 wash- and 3 spirit-), very unusually of different shape and size. The distillation is very complex: wash-still #3 and spirit-still #3 are paired, and they work like in a regular distillery. The other wash-stills (#1 and #2) work together, but their distillation is (unusually) divided into two cuts, the first goes into spirit-still #2, while the second (heavier) gets re-distilled three times (with the other distillations feints) in the other spirit still, the Wee Witchie, and the cut is only taken every third distillation. If you are confused, no worries, we are too, but the idea is to provide different characters to the newmake spirit. Someone in the past made the calculation, and it turned out the spirit is distilled 2.81 times – it would be nice to see those equations (nerd alert! Nerd alert!).

Theory…

…and practice! (The Wee Witchie is the closest to us.)

As we moved outside, we could admire one of the other characteristics that made Mortlach popular: the 6 worm tub condensers, one for each still. It is believed this is what provides meatiness to the spirit. They are made of wood, except one which is made of metal because the wooden one started leaking – they told us it might be replaced at some point with a new wooden one. They take the cooling water for the wormtubs from the river Dullan, one of their 6 sources of water for all the process: remember that they produce between 3.5 and 4 million litres of alcohol per year! Finally, we ventured in the warehouse, where casks from many distilleries were resting, including many non-Diageo ones, surprisingly. Kirstie explained us the processes happening in maturation: additive (compounds from the wood affect the liquid), subtractive (compounds from the liquid are removed by the wood contact) and oxidative (the contact with air changes the liquid, as you will know if you ever had a bottle open for more than 4-6 months).

The famous worm tub condensers.

Back outside, Kirstie showed us where some buildings used to be, as well as their still existing but currently unused malting floor, on the other side of the road (at the moment part of it is used as deposit for the Dufftown Whisky & Heritage Centre). We went back to the meeting room to enjoy the (stingy, considering 80 quid) 3-dram tasting. These were the flagship Mortlach 16y (43.4%), Mortlach 15y Game of Thrones Six Kingdoms (finished in ex-bourbon casks and bottled at 46%) and a non-age statement (NAS) from the 2022 Special Release. We’re quite familiar with the 16y (we used to have it, and gifted some), and we had tried the 15y GoT once (nice to revisit), so we were very curious about the third, mostly because the RRP was insane for a NAS, well above £200. This expression was finished in Tawny Port, Red Muscato wine, Virgin Oak casks and bottled at cask strength (57.8%). Turned out, it was nice but not mind-blowing by any means, as you’d expect considering the fanfare.

The tasting at the end.

Overall, this was a great visit, and Kirstie contributed to make it as nerdy as expected, for such a peculiar distillery like Mortlach. The price is a bit steep, £80 for a tour and 3 drams (+ cocktail), so it’s hard to recommend it. However, if you’re at the right moment of your whisky journey, it is definitely one to visit, despite the price. For us, it was worth it, and we look forward to more deep dives like this.

The Mortlach Distillery Tour (Spirit of Speyside)

Price: £80.00 pp (April 2023)

Duration: 2hr

Tasting: 3 drams and a welcome cocktail, Mortlach 16 (43.4%), Mortlach 15 the Six Kingdoms (46%), Mortlach Special Release 2022 (NAS, 57.8%)

Target: a bit more seasoned whisky geeks and nerds

Value for money: not great

Highlights: the detailed tour and explanation of such a complicated distillation process

Recommended: only if you’re quite ahead in your whisky journey (see last paragraph above)

Link: https://www.malts.com/en-gb/brands/mortlach, https://www.spiritofspeyside.com/