Berry's Knockdhu 2012

Tasting Notes

Evan's Tasting Note

Nose: Freshly glazed doughnuts, almond paste, vanilla, chamomile tea with honey, shortbread, and a medley of sliced apples, plus a hint of grass and hay bales drying in the sun.

Palate: Big heat at first with floral and spice notes fallowed by a creamy texture as it settles on the tongue. Pears and apples once more, this time in with pineapple and honeydew cubes in a fruit salad. Shortbread and light malt notes abound as well.

Finish: Orchard and stone fruit abundant along with honey, mint leaf, and a lingering floral note. Settles down and settles in for a soft and slow, dry fade.

Comments: This is precisely what I was hoping it would be: big and structured yet lush, fruity, floral, and creamy. It checks all the boxes for a great younger Knockdhu.

Producer Tasting Note

"This Knockdhu has a dry nutty nose expanding with time in the glass. It shows almonds and walnuts before green fruits and banana bread notes appear. The palate is an equally complex meeting of fruits, wood spice, and distillate-driven nuttiness, offering an excellent mouthfeel. A little tobacco dances across the finish, with a buffet of citrus and some honeyed green fruits."

Independent Bottler

One of our favourite independent bottlers, Berry Bros. & Rudd is a stored London-based firm which has resided at #3 St. James Street, a stone's throw from St. James Palace, since 1698. Primarily a wine merchant, they have also played a prominent role in the Scotch whisky industry. In addition to founding the Cutty Sark Blend, and managing the Glenrothes brand for 30 years, BBR is also an independent bottler. We have long been impressed not only by the quality of their independent bottlings, but also their value! 

Berry Bros. & Rudd in Their Own Words

With two Royal Warrants and more than 300 years of history, Berry Bros. & Rudd is Britain’s original wine and spirits merchant. 

We can trace our history back to 1698, when an enterprising woman called the Widow Bourne started an “Italian grocer’s” at No.3 St James’s Street, selling tea, snuff, spices and the most fashionable drink of the day, coffee. The sign of the coffee mill still hangs outside our premises at No.3 today, in tribute to our roots.

In due course, our focus shifted to something a little bit stronger. As wine became important to the business, so too did spirits, and we started bottling casks under our label in the early 19th century, making us Britain’s oldest independent spirits bottler. Three centuries on, the family business continues to flourish, with its heart still very much at No.3.

While much has changed over the years, we are still owned and managed by members of the Berry and Rudd families, and we continue to supply the British Royal Family, as we have done since the reign of King George III. We still, from time to time, weigh customers on a giant set of coffee scales, a tradition which began in the 1760s, with Lord Byron, William Pitt and Beau Brummell among those who have had their weights recorded in our ledgers. Most importantly, we still believe that everything you should look for in a wine or spirit comes down to one simple question: “Is it good to drink?”

Distillery

This information was blatantly copied from one of Evan's Whisky Calendar blog posts with slight modifications. That is okay, though, because Evan is only ripping off himself.

by Evan

Knockdhu Distillery was founded back in 1893, and more or less operated steadily for the next 100 years — except for short closures during the great depression and World War II — until the great Scottish distillery cull of 1983 nearly killed it for good. Knockdhu was mothballed at that time by then-owners DCL, but in 1988 a buyer by the name of Inver House was found. Inver House Distillers itself was founded in 1964 and lead the newly built Glen Flagler malt Distillery and Garnheath grain distillery on the same site in Airdrie, North Lanarkshire in the Scottish Lowlands. Glen Flagler and Garnheath were closed — never to reopen — in 1985 and 1986 respectively, a few years before the Knockdhu Distillery purchase.

After its purchase of Knockdhu in 1988, Inver House went on to add a few more distilleries to its portfolio over the following decade. Speyburn (purchased in 1991), Pulteney (acquired in 1995), Balblair (purchased in 1996) Balmenach (purchased in 1997), are all still part of the Inver House lineup, along with Knockdhu. Inver House Distillers itself changed hands a few times during its lifespan, but has been owned by the big-in-Asia company Thai Beverage since 2006.

Official bottlings are not actually given the distillery name for release. Instead, they are given the name anCnoc, possibly to avoid confusion with another Scottish distillery named Knockando. Funny how attempting to avoid confusion often makes things even more confusing instead, isn’t it?

The Knockdhu Distillery resides in the village of Knock within Aberdeenshire. This puts the distillery in the East Highlands or Speyside, depending on who is drawing the regional maps. The SWA’s own Scottish Distillery map classifies Knockdhu as being within Speyside. However, the owner — Inver House — puts Highland Single Malt on each bottle of anCnoc it sells.

Distilleries located near Knockdhu include GlenDronach, which less than a 20-minute drive to the south and east, and Aultmore which is about the same length of drive to the west. Like Knockdhu/anCnoc, GlenDronach also considers itself a Highland Single Malt, and has a fetish for capitalizing a letter in the middle of its name for some reason. Aultmore is comfortable in calling itself a Speyside whisky, though. Don’t you just hate it when invisible and intangible lines are what classify things? Oh, well. What would we talk about if there weren't any arbitrary and antiquated regional concepts to make fun of?

Knockdhu has quietly produced fantastic unpeated Single Malt Scotch for quite a while. It creates a robust and rich spirit that matures nicely in both ex-Bourbon and ex-Sherry casks. Part of the reason for this might be because it is one of the distilleries that makes use of worm tubs to cool the spirit that comes off the lyne arms at the top of the stills — a worm tub made of cast iron and connected to the lyne arms that run off the spirit stills in this case.

Knockdhu plays a role in at least some of the Blended Scotch whisky brands owned by Inver House, such as Catto's, Hankey Bannister, and MacArthur's. It is also used by other blenders such as Turntable Blending House.