Craigellachie was built in 1891 on a bluff above the confluence of the Fiddich and the Spey, a late-Victorian distillery erected at the height of the blending boom by a syndicate that included the legendary Alexander Edward and Peter Mackie of White Horse fame. For more than a century its single malt was almost entirely swallowed by the blending trade — most of it disappearing into White Horse — and bottlings under the distillery name were vanishingly rare.
That changed in 2014, when Bacardi-owned Dewar's finally gave Craigellachie a proper single malt range, and the 19 Year Old stood out immediately as the critics' favourite. The distillery has stubbornly held on to its worm tubs and oil-fired stills, a pair of archaic touches that produce a heavier, sulphurier spirit than most of modern Speyside cares to admit to. The results are unmistakable on the nose: a struck match, a wisp of something almost meaty, and then a wave of pineapple and beeswax rolling in behind.
On the palate the savoury edge becomes the making of the whisky rather than a curiosity. Grilled pineapple, singed matchhead, leather and oatcake, all wrapped in the waxy honeyed core the distillery is quietly famous for among those who hunt it out. The finish is long and dry, with smoked meat drifting off into old oak.
This is an old-fashioned Speyside bottled without apology — the sort of malt that reminds the drinker why worm tubs were worth keeping in the first place.
