Whisky Sponge Knockdhu 2006 Ed. No. 63

Tasting Notes

Evan's Tasting Note

Nose: A brewing storm of sooty smoke mixed with peaches, plums, cherries, caramelizing brown sugar, crispy roasted duck skin, roasted carrots, and a touch of iodine.

Palate: Slightly oily and viscous. Full of smoke and fruit with a touch of zingy citrus. Notes of roasted ham with cloves and peppercorn, peach cobbler with a slightly burnt crust, crème brûlée, and some drying notes of thyme and basil.

Finish: Earthy, smokey and lengthy with light touches of brown sugar and fennel as it fades.

Comments: Big, but not overly chewy. Full of flavour, but not weighed down by the cask it was aged in. I can't argue with the choice for 55% on this bottling. It works well, offering enough room for the different notes in the whisky to have their say.

Producer Tasting Note

“Nose: pure olive bine, peat ash, lemon juice and seawater. Simplistic, naked, raw and insanely pure. A medical tincture injected directly into your nostril! Palate: once again all about purity, power, precision and raw ingredient flavours. Yeasty, briny, citric, ashy and robustly smoky. Finish: long, extremely salty, full of pickling vinegars, mercurochrome, bonfire ashes and grizzly peat.“ 

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.