2018 KWM Whisky Calendar Day 13: Cadenhead Balmenach 13 Year
Posted on December 4, 2022
by Evan and AndrewImage courtesy of @frombarreltobottle
We have another Cadenhead single malt today, and will thus continue the Cadenhead Tale with Part IV. When we left off with George Duthie's untimely demise, Ann Oliver took over. For the next 4 decades Ann Oliver, who is remembered as something of an eccentric, ran the business how she saw fit. She was better at purchasing than selling and had a reputation for buying liberally and often. When she was finally forced to retire the Cadenheads warehouses were overflowing with not just wine and spirits, but also empty bottles and labels. But that wasn't the worst bit of news, it seems Ms. Oliver was also not a fan of bookkeeping and had kept practically no records. Without records, the bank deemed Cadenheads insolvent and the business and all of its assets were put up for auction by Christie's in early October of 1972. The sale's catalogue ran to 167 pages.
The auction caught the attention of Hedley Wright, owner of Springbank Distillery in Campbeltown. While the firm itself and its whiskies would certainly have been of interest to Mr. Wright, it was the stock of empty bottles that most interested him. There was a shortage of glass bottles in the UK at the time. In the end, Hedley acquired Cadenhead through J&A Mitchell, and in the terms of the agreement, it was made clear that he wanted Cadenheads stock of empty bottles. The sale went through, but the bottles were never found...
That concludes this bottle's history lesson on Cadenhead's. More to come in Part V, the start of Cadenhead's modern era! Now: onto the distillery.
Balmenach distillery was (officially) founded in 1824 when it was licensed to James MacGregor, who came from a family of farmers and illicit distillers. MacGregor at the time operated the similarly named Balminoch Farm when the local Gauger showed up for an impromptu inspection of the farm buildings and their contents. The Gauger ‘suggested’ to MacGregor that he obtain a distillery licence after he tried to tell the man that a building which held an illicit still was just a simple peat shed. Obviously, that excuse did not fly, and luckily MacGregor was smart enough to listen.
This was one of the earliest licences granted after the Small Stills act or Excise act of 1823 came to power. This was the piece of legislation that laid the foundation for the Scotch Whisky Industry as we know it today, making legal distillation an affordable and safer alternative to skirting the law. The Act made distilling legal upon obtaining the £10 licence and paying a set tax on each gallon of spirit produced.
The MacGregor family owned the Balmenach Distillery for nearly a century, eventually forming the Balmenach Glenlivet Distilling Company in 1897 before eventually ...
KWM Advent 2018 Day 12 – The GlenAllachie 12 Year
Posted on November 12, 2023
by AndrewWe were not alone in our grief when news broke in 2016 that the BenRiach Distillery Co. had been sold to Brown Forman. For the previous decade, BenRiach and GlenDronach had been two of the most interesting distilleries to watch. Their impresario Billy Walker had built both whisky brands into respected players in the single malt world. Billy Walker was personally seen as an industry leader and innovator. What I didn’t know at the time, was that Billy didn’t want to sell, but his partners needed the money and wanted out, thus he had no choice. His storied career was not done yet however, there was at least one more chapter to write.
[caption id="attachment_7671" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="GlenAllachie Distillery"][/caption]
I paid my first visit to the GlenAllachie Distillery in May this year. Billy Walker and a small consortium had just purchased it from Pernod Ricard a few months earlier and were still in the process of digesting their acquisition and getting a core whisky range ready for the market. In all the years (more than a decade) that I had worked with his brands, I had never actually met Billy. He was more warm and humble than I expected, a true gentleman. I hovered as he diluted advanced samples of the BenRiach 12 and 25-year-olds which they were getting ready for markets around the World. He gave me an opportunity to sample them, and even though he was busy he made the time to make me feel welcome and answer my questions. Here was a business owner who was passionate about his product, proud of his legacy and the people who worked for him and genuinely interested in his customers.
Billy’s acquisition of The GlenAllachie was not the first time he had purchased a distillery from Pernod. Both BenRiach and Glendronach Distilleries were acquired over a pint with a contract scribbled on a napkin if you believe his son Alastair’s telling of the tale. After selling the BenRiach Distillery Co. to Brown Forman, Billy was looking for a new project. He approached Pernod Ricard with a proposal to relaunch and rebrand the Scapa Distillery in the Orkneys. Pernod politely turned him down, but offered him the opportunity to purchase GlenAllachie. Billy jumped at the opportunity to acquire this almost unknown Speyside distillery, and purchased it with partners Trisha Savage and Graham Stevenson. The acquisition included 50,000 casks of maturing whisky.
[caption id="attachment_7670" align="aligncenter" width="640" caption="The stills at GlenAllachie Distillery"][/caption]
The GlenAllachie 12 Year is one of the newly independent distillery’s first core releases, alongside a cask strength 10 Year, 18 Year and 25 Year. As with the BenR...
KWM Advent 2018 Day 11 - Wolfburn Morven
Posted on November 12, 2023
by EvanDay 11 brings us another first for our KWM Whisky Advent Calendar - This time the first bottle we have featured from the most northern distillery on mainland Scotland: Wolfburn. Today's whisky is the Morven, a lightly peated single malt from this young distillery. But first, a bit of history.
The original Wolfburn Distillery was built in 1821 by William Smith. It resided just west of Thurso, Caithness. At the time it was the largest operating distillery in the area of Caithness, producing up to 125,000 Litres of spirit annually. The old distillery was operated successfully and was handed down through several generations of the Smith family until 1837. It was run at least once more in 1852 by David Smith, but that only lasted the year. It may have operated sporadically as well in the 1860s but no official records of this have been found. Not much is known about exactly when and why the original finally and completely distillery shut down, but it did, for good at some point in between 1850 and 1872. When the very first ordinance survey of the area was commissioned in 1872 was made, the distillery buildings were listed as ruins. There are no known photographs of the original distillery. All that remains are the ruins and the production records to mark its existence.
In May of 2011, a team went in search of the long lost distillery of Wolfburn. Nothing of the original distillery survived except the cold clean water from the nearby Wolf Burn they used to produce their spirit. The following year, again in May, work began to rebuild what would supplant Old Pulteney as the northernmost mainland distillery. After breaking ground in August of 2012, construction on the new Wolfburn Distillery was completed with impressive speed, and on Robbie Burns Day 2013 (January 25th) spirit began to flow off the stills for the first time.
The new distillery was built in Henderson Park, Thurso by Aurora Brewing, near the same site as the ruins of its previous namesake. It sits just 350 metres from what is now not much more than a pile of rocks. It produces about 135,000 Litres of spirit a year, just slightly more than its namesake did more than 150 years ago. This makes the new distillery very small by Scottish standards where even the tiniest distilleries owned by the big guys still typically produce a million litres of spirit or more per annum.
The owners and stillmasters focus and going slow and steady when it comes to fermentation and distillation. It has mainly run unpeated spirit off the stills thus far, though they have produced a portion of 10 PPM lightly peated spirit as well since 2014. Maturation-wise, the whisky is aged in a combination of one-third quarter casks, one-third ex-Bourbon barrels or hogsheads, and one-third ex-Oloroso Sherry butts. These casks are kept in one of the two dunnage warehouses on-site.
...
KWM Advent 2018 Day 10 - Black Mountain Notes Fumees
Posted on November 12, 2023
by EvanWelcome to day ten on the KWM Whisky Advent marathon! Today the calendar has given us our second non-Scottish Whisky - this time coming to us from France. Black Mountain Notes Fumées is the name of the whisky - sourced from Scotland, then finished and bottled in the south of France.
Whisky may not be the first aged spirit or even alcohol that you think of when it comes to France, but perhaps it should be. To many of us, the country might only be thought of as the place that makes everything from grapes: Cognac and Armagnac plus many styles of red and white wine from the likes of Bordeaux, Burgundy, Rhone, Champagne and so on - but it is much more than that. Even with all of this viniferous production that is imbibed both locally and around the world, the French still manage to drink more Scotch per capita than any other country in the world.
Like many other countries in the current, global whisky boom-time, France has seen quite a few distilleries established within its borders in the past decade, with at least 40 distilleries producing whisky or what will eventually be whisky within the Country. Some French whiskies have already hit the Alberta market such as Warenghem, Glann Ar Mor/Kornog, Bellevoye, Osokye and Bastille. Now joining the selection of French Whisky available to us is Black Mountain.
Black Mountain Compagnie SAS was formed in late 2011 by four friends from Toulouse in the region of Occitan, which resides in Southern France. The team behind the Black Mountain company have been blending carefully selected malt and grain whisky sourced from Scottish distilleries for a while now. They focus on creating whisky that is stylistically light, floral and fruity with a hint of spice.
The company made their first entirely French Single Malt in the region in March of 2018, distilling a small batch with another local distillery. Their own future distillery may still the planning stages, but the team hopes to bring whisky making to the Occitan region in a big way. The land they have selected for the future distillery resides 3000 feet above sea level on a plateau of the Montagne Noire, which the company takes its name from. There is a spring in the same area that is also the planned water source and is already used to cut the selected whiskies at before bottling.
The company currently has three releases in their main whisky portfolio, all of which are currently available in Alberta. Black Mountain N1 - Excellence and N2 - Premium are both mostly unpeated in style. The moderately peated Black Mountain Notes Fumées (smoke notes in English) rounds out their current line up. It was awarded Best French Blended Whisky at the World Whiskies Awards in 2017.
The Black Mountain Notes Fumées is a young blend - st...
KWM Advent 2018 Day 9 - Cadenhead Glen Spey 2001
Posted on November 12, 2023
by AndrewToday’s dram is another Cadenhead single cask bottled for France. Bottled at 54.4%, the whisky matured for 16 years in a Bourbon Hogshead before bottling earlier this year. We have 50mls of the whisky available for sale, and can probably get 700mls if we ask nicely… And so we continue with the Brief History of Cadenhead's, Part III. When last we left the heroes of Cadenheads, the firm’s namesake owner, William Cadenhead, had just passed away. On his death in 1904 his nephew Robert Duthie took control of the firm for what would prove to be an early Golden Age, and that is where we will pick up the tale!
Robert W. Duthie was born in what was then called Bombay, India. His father was Superintendent of the Scottish orphanage there. Under his stewardship, Cadenhead's would become famous for its expertise in bottling vatted and single malt whiskies as well as Demerara Rum. The firm was already bottling single malts, but Duthie focused on producing a more premium product. The concept of blending malts was born during his reign too, and two notable brands were introduced: The Heilanman and the more exclusive Putachieside. The Cadenhead's motto under Duthie's stewardship became, “By Test the best!†This became a marketing slogan for the firm. Robert Duthie was so proud and sure of his product that he was confident boasting of its quality.
[caption id="attachment_7575" align="aligncenter" width="291" caption="Cadenhead Putachieside"][/caption]
Duthie was an early pioneer in the Aberdeen area when it came to advertising. The Cadenhead's brand and motto could be seen on theatre curtains, in performance programs and on the sides of buses and trams. Sadly, it was one of these tram cars that knocked him down at the height of the Great Depression in 1931 whilst on the way to the bank. At that point, the firm was not in good financial health. His untimely passing left the Cadenhead's in the hands of two spinster sisters. They had no knowledge of the wine and spirits trade but wanted the family’s business legacy to carry on, so they handed over day-to-day control of the business to Duthie’s long-time employee Ann Oliver. We will pick up the tale here in the next installment, Part IV.
The Glen Spey Distillery is not well known, even to the most observant of whisky nerds. The vast majority of its production has long been reserved Blends, most importantly Spey Royal. Like the distillery, the Spey Royal blend may not be a household name for you as it is for the most part sold in Thailand. The whisky was the dominant player in Thailand through the 1990s, accounting for 80% of all Blended whisky sales in the country. By the turn of the millennium, its ma...
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