Edradour sits above Pitlochry in Perthshire and long advertised itself as the smallest distillery in Scotland, a claim it held for decades before a wave of craft newcomers complicated the picture. The site was licensed in 1825 and operated until 2002 under Pernod Ricard's forebears before Andrew Symington of Signatory Vintage bought it and set about rebuilding its reputation as a bottler of character-led single malts.
Symington's enthusiasm for unusual wood finishes is stamped across the Edradour range, and the 14 Year Old Bordeaux Cask is a good example of house style. The spirit, distilled in Edradour's famously small stills and condensed in one of the last remaining Morton refrigerators in Scotland, is naturally heavy and oily. That weight handles wine-cask maturation well, and fourteen years in ex-Bordeaux barriques pulls the whisky toward the darker end of the red-fruit spectrum without stripping away Edradour's waxy core.
Bottled at 46 per cent, non-chill-filtered and without added colour, it pours a convincing rosewood. On the nose it behaves exactly as advertised: stewed berries, cherry compote, a touch of cedar and old library. The palate is the main event, generous and a little tannic, with mulberry and damson giving way to cocoa and clove. The finish dries out as the wood grip asserts itself, leaving a faintly herbal resonance.
This is not a subtle whisky, and wine-cask finishes are an acquired taste, but Edradour's heft gives it the backbone to carry the influence. Admirers of Glendronach's sherried output will find familiar territory here, rendered in claret rather than oloroso.
