Brave New Spirits Craigellachie 14 Year

Tasting Notes

Producer Tasting Note: "Roasted Pineapple, Honey Nut Cheerios, and Hay"

Distillery

Originally written by Evan for a blog post related to KWM's 2020 Whisky Calendar.

Let’s start with a side note: Us Canadians are used to a different pronunciation of Craigellachie than the Scots. We also often know it more as the B.C. town where the last spike in the Canada Pacific Railway was driven into railway tie - and we pronounce it something like “Craig-a-latch-key” – if you drop the "k" in “key”. For the proper pronunciation of the Distillery name, the CH in CraigellaCHie is hardened to a “k” sound. I would love to link to the great Brian Cox saying it for our benefit on Youtube, but sadly I don’t think he recorded that one. Instead, here is some other guy saying it.

Craigellachie Distillery resides in Banffshire, Scotland in the heart of Speyside – not too far down the road from both Macallan and Aberlour distilleries, among others. Craigellachie was founded in 1891 and is currently owned by Bacardi under their John Dewar’s and Sons Scotch Whisky Branch. It is one of five Scottish Distilleries own by Bacardi, all of which are bottled under their Last Great Malts line of single malts.

Craigellachie is one of less than 20 distilleries in Scotland operating today to utilize worm tubs to condense the spirit vapours coming up off the neck of the pot stills. From the neck, the spirit vapour flows through a lyne arm that connects to a long line of copper tubing that is submerged in a large vat of cooling water. Though this piping might be lengthy, it doesn’t allow as much copper contact as a more typical spiral tubed condenser would.

The resulting spirit retains more heavy, meaty, sulphury notes that would have been stripped out with increased copper contact. This is what gives Craigellachie its rich, meaty style at such a young age. It is also what makes Craigellachie sought after for blending, just as it does with the likes of Mortlach, Benrinnes and Balmenach – other distilleries that utilize worm tubs. 

Craigellachie is primarily used by Bacardi/Dewar’s for its Dewar’s White Label and other Blended Scotch Whisky the company creates.

Craigellachie is one of only two distilleries to be bottled at a respectable 46% ABV in Bacardi’s Last Great Malts family of single malts – the other being Aultmore. What makes it unique in the line is that all official Craigellachie bottlings thus far have been released with age statements that happen to be prime numbers. There is the 13 Year Old that we will be tasting, as well as ages 17, and 23 years old in the core range. There is also a 19-year-old duty-free bottling and a few older that we haven’t seen much of yet in Alberta: these are 31, 33, 39, and 51 years old respectively.